The Yahoo and the Angry Ape

Contemplating this picture of a state of mankind so recent that no
denial of its truth is possible, one understands Shakespeare comparing
Man to an angry ape, Swift describing him as a Yahoo rebuked by the
superior virtue of the horse, and Wellington declaring that the British
can behave themselves neither in victory nor defeat. Yet none of the
three had seen war as we have seen it. Shakespeare blamed great men,
saying that "Could great men thunder as Jove himself does, Jove would
ne'er be quiet; for every pelting petty officer would use his heaven for
thunder: nothing but thunder." What would Shakespeare have said if he
had seen something far more destructive than thunder in the hand of
every village laborer, and found on the Messines Ridge the craters
of the nineteen volcanoes that were let loose there at the touch of a
finger that might have been a child's finger without the result being a
whit less ruinous? Shakespeare may have seen a Stratford cottage struck
by one of Jove's thunderbolts, and have helped to extinguish the lighted
thatch and clear away the bits of the broken chimney. What would he have
said if he had seen Ypres as it is now, or returned to Stratford, as
French peasants are returning to their homes to-day, to find the old
familiar signpost inscribed "To Stratford, 1 mile," and at the end of
the mile nothing but some holes in the ground and a fragment of a broken
churn here and there? Would not the spectacle of the angry ape endowed
with powers of destruction that Jove never pretended to, have beggared
even his command of words?

And yet, what is there to say except that war puts a strain on human
nature that breaks down the better half of it, and makes the worse half
a diabolical virtue? Better, for us if it broke it down altogether, for
then the warlike way out of our difficulties would be barred to us, and
we should take greater care not to get into them. In truth, it is, as
Byron said, "not difficult to die," and enormously difficult to live:
that explains why, at bottom, peace is not only better than war, but
infinitely more arduous. Did any hero of the war face the glorious
risk of death more bravely than the traitor Bolo faced the ignominious
certainty of it? Bolo taught us all how to die: can we say that he
taught us all how to live? Hardly a week passes now without some soldier
who braved death in the field so recklessly that he was decorated or
specially commended for it, being haled before our magistrates for
having failed to resist the paltriest temptations of peace, with no
better excuse than the old one that "a man must live." Strange that one
who, sooner than do honest work, will sell his honor for a bottle of
wine, a visit to the theatre, and an hour with a strange woman, all
obtained by passing a worthless cheque, could yet stake his life on
the most desperate chances of the battle-field! Does it not seem as if,
after all, the glory of death were cheaper than the glory of life? If
it is not easier to attain, why do so many more men attain it? At all
events it is clear that the kingdom of the Prince of Peace has not yet
become the kingdom of this world. His attempts at invasion have been
resisted far more fiercely than the Kaiser's. Successful as that
resistance has been, it has piled up a sort of National Debt that is not
the less oppressive because we have no figures for it and do not intend
to pay it. A blockade that cuts off "the grace of our Lord" is in the
long run less bearable than the blockades which merely cut off raw
materials; and against that blockade our Armada is impotent. In the
blockader's house, he has assured us, there are many mansions; but I am
afraid they do not include either Heartbreak House or Horseback Hall.



Plague on Both your Houses!

Meanwhile the Bolshevist picks and petards are at work on the
foundations of both buildings; and though the Bolshevists may be buried
in the ruins, their deaths will not save the edifices. Unfortunately
they can be built again. Like Doubting Castle, they have been demolished
many times by successive Greathearts, and rebuilt by Simple, Sloth, and
Presumption, by Feeble Mind and Much Afraid, and by all the jurymen of
Vanity Fair. Another generation of "secondary education" at our ancient
public schools and the cheaper institutions that ape them will be quite
sufficient to keep the two going until the next war. For the instruction
of that generation I leave these pages as a record of what civilian
life was during the war: a matter on which history is usually silent.
Fortunately it was a very short war. It is true that the people who
thought it could not last more than six months were very signally
refuted by the event. As Sir Douglas Haig has pointed out, its Waterloos
lasted months instead of hours. But there would have been nothing
surprising in its lasting thirty years. If it had not been for the fact
that the blockade achieved the amazing feat of starving out Europe,
which it could not possibly have done had Europe been properly organized
for war, or even for peace, the war would have lasted until the
belligerents were so tired of it that they could no longer be compelled
to compel themselves to go on with it. Considering its magnitude, the
war of 1914-18 will certainly be classed as the shortest in history. The
end came so suddenly that the combatant literally stumbled over it;
and yet it came a full year later than it should have come if the
belligerents had not been far too afraid of one another to face the
situation sensibly. Germany, having failed to provide for the war she
began, failed again to surrender before she was dangerously exhausted.
Her opponents, equally improvident, went as much too close to bankruptcy
as Germany to starvation. It was a bluff at which both were bluffed.
And, with the usual irony of war, it remains doubtful whether Germany
and Russia, the defeated, will not be the gainers; for the victors are
already busy fastening on themselves the chains they have struck from
the limbs of the vanquished.



How the Theatre fared

Let us now contract our view rather violently from the European theatre
of war to the theatre in which the fights are sham fights, and the
slain, rising the moment the curtain has fallen, go comfortably home
to supper after washing off their rose-pink wounds. It is nearly twenty
years since I was last obliged to introduce a play in the form of a
book for lack of an opportunity of presenting it in its proper mode by a
performance in a theatre. The war has thrown me back on this expedient.
Heartbreak House has not yet reached the stage. I have withheld it
because the war has completely upset the economic conditions which
formerly enabled serious drama to pay its way in London. The change is
not in the theatres nor in the management of them, nor in the authors
and actors, but in the audiences. For four years the London theatres
were crowded every night with thousands of soldiers on leave from the
front. These soldiers were not seasoned London playgoers. A childish
experience of my own gave me a clue to their condition. When I was a
small boy I was taken to the opera. I did not then know what an opera
was, though I could whistle a good deal of opera music. I had seen in
my mother's album photographs of all the great opera singers, mostly
in evening dress. In the theatre I found myself before a gilded balcony
filled with persons in evening dress whom I took to be the opera
singers. I picked out one massive dark lady as Alboni, and wondered how
soon she would stand up and sing. I was puzzled by the fact that I was
made to sit with my back to the singers instead of facing them. When the
curtain went up, my astonishment and delight were unbounded.



The Soldier at the Theatre Front

In 1915, I saw in the theatres men in khaki in just the same
predicament. To everyone who had my clue to their state of mind it was
evident that they had never been in a theatre before and did not know
what it was. At one of our great variety theatres I sat beside a young
officer, not at all a rough specimen, who, even when the curtain
rose and enlightened him as to the place where he had to look for his
entertainment, found the dramatic part of it utterly incomprehensible.
He did not know how to play his part of the game. He could understand
the people on the stage singing and dancing and performing gymnastic
feats. He not only understood but intensely enjoyed an artist who
imitated cocks crowing and pigs squeaking. But the people who pretended
that they were somebody else, and that the painted picture behind
them was real, bewildered him. In his presence I realized how very
sophisticated the natural man has to become before the conventions
of the theatre can be easily acceptable, or the purpose of the drama
obvious to him.

Well, from the moment when the routine of leave for our soldiers was
established, such novices, accompanied by damsels (called flappers)
often as innocent as themselves, crowded the theatres to the doors. It
was hardly possible at first to find stuff crude enough to nurse them
on. The best music-hall comedians ransacked their memories for the
oldest quips and the most childish antics to avoid carrying the military
spectators out of their depth. I believe that this was a mistake as far
as the novices were concerned. Shakespeare, or the dramatized histories
of George Barnwell, Maria Martin, or the Demon Barber of Fleet Street,
would probably have been quite popular with them. But the novices were
only a minority after all. The cultivated soldier, who in time of peace
would look at nothing theatrical except the most advanced postIbsen
plays in the most artistic settings, found himself, to his own
astonishment, thirsting for silly jokes, dances, and brainlessly
sensuous exhibitions of pretty girls. The author of some of the most
grimly serious plays of our time told me that after enduring the
trenches for months without a glimpse of the female of his species, it
gave him an entirely innocent but delightful pleasure merely to see
a flapper. The reaction from the battle-field produced a condition of
hyperaesthesia in which all the theatrical values were altered. Trivial
things gained intensity and stale things novelty. The actor, instead of
having to coax his audiences out of the boredom which had driven them to
the theatre in an ill humor to seek some sort of distraction, had only
to exploit the bliss of smiling men who were no longer under fire and
under military discipline, but actually clean and comfortable and in a
mood to be pleased with anything and everything that a bevy of pretty
girls and a funny man, or even a bevy of girls pretending to be pretty
and a man pretending to be funny, could do for them.

Then could be seen every night in the theatres oldfashioned farcical
comedies, in which a bedroom, with four doors on each side and a
practicable window in the middle, was understood to resemble exactly the
bedroom in the flats beneath and above, all three inhabited by couples
consumed with jealousy. When these people came home drunk at night;
mistook their neighbor's flats for their own; and in due course got
into the wrong beds, it was not only the novices who found the resulting
complications and scandals exquisitely ingenious and amusing, nor their
equally verdant flappers who could not help squealing in a manner that
astonished the oldest performers when the gentleman who had just come in
drunk through the window pretended to undress, and allowed glimpses of
his naked person to be descried from time to time.



Heartbreak House

Men who had just read the news that Charles Wyndham was dying, and
were thereby sadly reminded of Pink Dominos and the torrent of farcical
comedies that followed it in his heyday until every trick of that trade
had become so stale that the laughter they provoked turned to loathing:
these veterans also, when they returned from the field, were as much
pleased by what they knew to be stale and foolish as the novices by what
they thought fresh and clever.



Commerce in the Theatre

Wellington said that an army moves on its belly. So does a London
theatre. Before a man acts he must eat. Before he performs plays he must
pay rent. In London we have no theatres for the welfare of the people:
they are all for the sole purpose of producing the utmost obtainable
rent for the proprietor. If the twin flats and twin beds produce a
guinea more than Shakespeare, out goes Shakespeare and in come the twin
flats and the twin beds. If the brainless bevy of pretty girls and the
funny man outbid Mozart, out goes Mozart.



Unser Shakespeare

Before the war an effort was made to remedy this by establishing a
national theatre in celebration of the tercentenary of the death of
Shakespeare. A committee was formed; and all sorts of illustrious and
influential persons lent their names to a grand appeal to our national
culture. My play, The Dark Lady of The Sonnets, was one of the incidents
of that appeal. After some years of effort the result was a single
handsome subscription from a German gentleman. Like the celebrated
swearer in the anecdote when the cart containing all his household goods
lost its tailboard at the top of the hill and let its contents roll
in ruin to the bottom, I can only say, "I cannot do justice to this
situation," and let it pass without another word.



The Higher Drama put out of Action

The effect of the war on the London theatres may now be imagined. The
beds and the bevies drove every higher form of art out of it. Rents
went up to an unprecedented figure. At the same time prices doubled
everywhere except at the theatre pay-boxes, and raised the expenses of
management to such a degree that unless the houses were quite full every
night, profit was impossible. Even bare solvency could not be attained
without a very wide popularity. Now what had made serious drama possible
to a limited extent before the war was that a play could pay its
way even if the theatre were only half full until Saturday and
three-quarters full then. A manager who was an enthusiast and a
desperately hard worker, with an occasional grant-in-aid from an
artistically disposed millionaire, and a due proportion of those rare
and happy accidents by which plays of the higher sort turn out to be
potboilers as well, could hold out for some years, by which time a relay
might arrive in the person of another enthusiast. Thus and not otherwise
occurred that remarkable revival of the British drama at the beginning
of the century which made my own career as a playwright possible in
England. In America I had already established myself, not as part of the
ordinary theatre system, but in association with the exceptional genius
of Richard Mansfield. In Germany and Austria I had no difficulty: the
system of publicly aided theatres there, Court and Municipal, kept drama
of the kind I dealt in alive; so that I was indebted to the Emperor of
Austria for magnificent productions of my works at a time when the sole
official attention paid me by the British Courts was the announcement
to the English-speaking world that certain plays of mine were unfit for
public performance, a substantial set-off against this being that the
British Court, in the course of its private playgoing, paid no regard to
the bad character given me by the chief officer of its household.

Howbeit, the fact that my plays effected a lodgment on the London stage,
and were presently followed by the plays of Granville Barker, Gilbert
Murray, John Masefield, St. John Hankin, Lawrence Housman, Arnold
Bennett, John Galsworthy, John Drinkwater, and others which would in
the nineteenth century have stood rather less chance of production at a
London theatre than the Dialogues of Plato, not to mention revivals
of the ancient Athenian drama and a restoration to the stage of
Shakespeare's plays as he wrote them, was made economically possible
solely by a supply of theatres which could hold nearly twice as much
money as it cost to rent and maintain them. In such theatres work
appealing to a relatively small class of cultivated persons, and
therefore attracting only from half to three-quarters as many spectators
as the more popular pastimes, could nevertheless keep going in the hands
of young adventurers who were doing it for its own sake, and had not
yet been forced by advancing age and responsibilities to consider the
commercial value of their time and energy too closely. The war struck
this foundation away in the manner I have just described. The expenses
of running the cheapest west-end theatres rose to a sum which exceeded
by twenty-five per cent the utmost that the higher drama can, as an
ascertained matter of fact, be depended on to draw. Thus the higher
drama, which has never really been a commercially sound speculation,
now became an impossible one. Accordingly, attempts are being made to
provide a refuge for it in suburban theatres in London and repertory
theatres in the provinces. But at the moment when the army has at last
disgorged the survivors of the gallant band of dramatic pioneers whom
it swallowed, they find that the economic conditions which formerly
made their work no worse than precarious now put it out of the question
altogether, as far as the west end of London is concerned.



Church and Theatre

I do not suppose many people care particularly. We are not brought up to
care; and a sense of the national importance of the theatre is not
born in mankind: the natural man, like so many of the soldiers at the
beginning of the war, does not know what a theatre is. But please note
that all these soldiers who did not know what a theatre was, knew what
a church was. And they had been taught to respect churches. Nobody
had ever warned them against a church as a place where frivolous women
paraded in their best clothes; where stories of improper females like
Potiphar's wife, and erotic poetry like the Song of Songs, were
read aloud; where the sensuous and sentimental music of Schubert,
Mendelssohn, Gounod, and Brahms was more popular than severe music by
greater composers; where the prettiest sort of pretty pictures of
pretty saints assailed the imagination and senses through stained-glass
windows; and where sculpture and architecture came to the help of
painting. Nobody ever reminded them that these things had sometimes
produced such developments of erotic idolatry that men who were not only
enthusiastic amateurs of literature, painting, and music, but famous
practitioners of them, had actually exulted when mobs and even regular
troops under express command had mutilated church statues, smashed
church windows, wrecked church organs, and torn up the sheets from which
the church music was read and sung. When they saw broken statues in
churches, they were told that this was the work of wicked, godless
rioters, instead of, as it was, the work partly of zealots bent on
driving the world, the flesh, and the devil out of the temple, and
partly of insurgent men who had become intolerably poor because the
temple had become a den of thieves. But all the sins and perversions
that were so carefully hidden from them in the history of the Church
were laid on the shoulders of the Theatre: that stuffy, uncomfortable
place of penance in which we suffer so much inconvenience on the
slenderest chance of gaining a scrap of food for our starving souls.
When the Germans bombed the Cathedral of Rheims the world rang with
the horror of the sacrilege. When they bombed the Little Theatre in
the Adelphi, and narrowly missed bombing two writers of plays who lived
within a few yards of it, the fact was not even mentioned in the papers.
In point of appeal to the senses no theatre ever built could touch the
fane at Rheims: no actress could rival its Virgin in beauty, nor any
operatic tenor look otherwise than a fool beside its David. Its picture
glass was glorious even to those who had seen the glass of Chartres.
It was wonderful in its very grotesques: who would look at the Blondin
Donkey after seeing its leviathans? In spite of the Adam-Adelphian
decoration on which Miss Kingston had lavished so much taste and care,
the Little Theatre was in comparison with Rheims the gloomiest of little
conventicles: indeed the cathedral must, from the Puritan point of view,
have debauched a million voluptuaries for every one whom the Little
Theatre had sent home thoughtful to a chaste bed after Mr Chesterton's
Magic or Brieux's Les Avaries. Perhaps that is the real reason why
the Church is lauded and the Theatre reviled. Whether or no, the fact
remains that the lady to whose public spirit and sense of the national
value of the theatre I owed the first regular public performance of
a play of mine had to conceal her action as if it had been a crime,
whereas if she had given the money to the Church she would have worn
a halo for it. And I admit, as I have always done, that this state of
things may have been a very sensible one. I have asked Londoners again
and again why they pay half a guinea to go to a theatre when they can
go to St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey for nothing. Their only possible
reply is that they want to see something new and possibly something
wicked; but the theatres mostly disappoint both hopes. If ever a
revolution makes me Dictator, I shall establish a heavy charge for
admission to our churches. But everyone who pays at the church door
shall receive a ticket entitling him or her to free admission to one
performance at any theatre he or she prefers. Thus shall the sensuous
charms of the church service be made to subsidize the sterner virtue of
the drama.



The Next Phase

The present situation will not last. Although the newspaper I read at
breakfast this morning before writing these words contains a calculation
that no less than twenty-three wars are at present being waged to
confirm the peace, England is no longer in khaki; and a violent reaction
is setting in against the crude theatrical fare of the four terrible
years. Soon the rents of theatres will once more be fixed on the
assumption that they cannot always be full, nor even on the average half
full week in and week out. Prices will change. The higher drama will
be at no greater disadvantage than it was before the war; and it may
benefit, first, by the fact that many of us have been torn from the
fools' paradise in which the theatre formerly traded, and thrust upon
the sternest realities and necessities until we have lost both faith in
and patience with the theatrical pretences that had no root either in
reality or necessity; second, by the startling change made by the war
in the distribution of income. It seems only the other day that a
millionaire was a man with ВЈ50,000 a year. To-day, when he has paid his
income tax and super tax, and insured his life for the amount of his
death duties, he is lucky if his net income is 10,000 pounds though his
nominal property remains the same. And this is the result of a Budget
which is called "a respite for the rich." At the other end of the scale
millions of persons have had regular incomes for the first time in
their lives; and their men have been regularly clothed, fed, lodged, and
taught to make up their minds that certain things have to be done, also
for the first time in their lives. Hundreds of thousands of women have
been taken out of their domestic cages and tasted both discipline and
independence. The thoughtless and snobbish middle classes have been
pulled up short by the very unpleasant experience of being ruined to an
unprecedented extent. We have all had a tremendous jolt; and although
the widespread notion that the shock of the war would automatically make
a new heaven and a new earth, and that the dog would never go back to
his vomit nor the sow to her wallowing in the mire, is already seen to
be a delusion, yet we are far more conscious of our condition than we
were, and far less disposed to submit to it. Revolution, lately only
a sensational chapter in history or a demagogic claptrap, is now a
possibility so imminent that hardly by trying to suppress it in
other countries by arms and defamation, and calling the process
anti-Bolshevism, can our Government stave it off at home.

Perhaps the most tragic figure of the day is the American President who
was once a historian. In those days it became his task to tell us how,
after that great war in America which was more clearly than any other
war of our time a war for an idea, the conquerors, confronted with a
heroic task of reconstruction, turned recreant, and spent fifteen years
in abusing their victory under cover of pretending to accomplish the
task they were doing what they could to make impossible. Alas! Hegel
was right when he said that we learn from history that men never learn
anything from history. With what anguish of mind the President sees that
we, the new conquerors, forgetting everything we professed to fight for,
are sitting down with watering mouths to a good square meal of ten years
revenge upon and humiliation of our prostrate foe, can only be guessed
by those who know, as he does, how hopeless is remonstrance, and how
happy Lincoln was in perishing from the earth before his inspired
messages became scraps of paper. He knows well that from the Peace
Conference will come, in spite of his utmost, no edict on which he will
be able, like Lincoln, to invoke "the considerate judgment of mankind:
and the gracious favor of Almighty God." He led his people to destroy
the militarism of Zabern; and the army they rescued is busy in Cologne
imprisoning every German who does not salute a British officer; whilst
the government at home, asked whether it approves, replies that it
does not propose even to discontinue this Zabernism when the Peace is
concluded, but in effect looks forward to making Germans salute British
officers until the end of the world. That is what war makes of men and
women. It will wear off; and the worst it threatens is already proving
impracticable; but before the humble and contrite heart ceases to be
despised, the President and I, being of the same age, will be dotards.
In the meantime there is, for him, another history to write; for me,
another comedy to stage. Perhaps, after all, that is what wars are for,
and what historians and playwrights are for. If men will not learn until
their lessons are written in blood, why, blood they must have, their own
for preference.



The Ephemeral Thrones and the Eternal Theatre

To the theatre it will not matter. Whatever Bastilles fall, the theatre
will stand. Apostolic Hapsburg has collapsed; All Highest Hohenzollern
languishes in Holland, threatened with trial on a capital charge of
fighting for his country against England; Imperial Romanoff, said to
have perished miserably by a more summary method of murder, is perhaps
alive or perhaps dead: nobody cares more than if he had been a peasant;
the lord of Hellas is level with his lackeys in republican Switzerland;
Prime Ministers and Commanders-in-Chief have passed from a brief glory
as Solons and Caesars into failure and obscurity as closely on one
another's heels as the descendants of Banquo; but Euripides and
Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Moliere, Goethe and Ibsen remain fixed in
their everlasting seats.



How War muzzles the Dramatic Poet

As for myself, why, it may be asked, did I not write two plays about
the war instead of two pamphlets on it? The answer is significant. You
cannot make war on war and on your neighbor at the same time. War cannot
bear the terrible castigation of comedy, the ruthless light of laughter
that glares on the stage. When men are heroically dying for their
country, it is not the time to show their lovers and wives and fathers
and mothers how they are being sacrificed to the blunders of
boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors, the
electioneering of demagogues, the Pharisaism of patriots, the lusts and
lies and rancors and bloodthirsts that love war because it opens their
prison doors, and sets them in the thrones of power and popularity. For
unless these things are mercilessly exposed they will hide under the
mantle of the ideals on the stage just as they do in real life.

And though there may be better things to reveal, it may not, and indeed
cannot, be militarily expedient to reveal them whilst the issue is still
in the balance. Truth telling is not compatible with the defence of
the realm. We are just now reading the revelations of our generals and
admirals, unmuzzled at last by the armistice. During the war, General A,
in his moving despatches from the field, told how General B had covered
himself with deathless glory in such and such a battle. He now tells us
that General B came within an ace of losing us the war by disobeying
his orders on that occasion, and fighting instead of running away as he
ought to have done. An excellent subject for comedy now that the war
is over, no doubt; but if General A had let this out at the time, what
would have been the effect on General B's soldiers? And had the stage
made known what the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for War
who overruled General A thought of him, and what he thought of them, as
now revealed in raging controversy, what would have been the effect on
the nation? That is why comedy, though sorely tempted, had to be loyally
silent; for the art of the dramatic poet knows no patriotism; recognizes
no obligation but truth to natural history; cares not whether Germany
or England perish; is ready to cry with Brynhild, "Lass'uns verderben,
lachend zu grunde geh'n" sooner than deceive or be deceived; and thus
becomes in time of war a greater military danger than poison, steel, or
trinitrotoluene. That is why I had to withhold Heartbreak House from
the footlights during the war; for the Germans might on any night have
turned the last act from play into earnest, and even then might not have
waited for their cues.

June, 1919.




HEARTBREAK HOUSE




ACT I

The hilly country in the middle of the north edge of Sussex, looking
very pleasant on a fine evening at the end of September, is seen through
the windows of a room which has been built so as to resemble the after
part of an old-fashioned high-pooped ship, with a stern gallery; for the
windows are ship built with heavy timbering, and run right across the
room as continuously as the stability of the wall allows. A row
of lockers under the windows provides an unupholstered windowseat
interrupted by twin glass doors, respectively halfway between the stern
post and the sides. Another door strains the illusion a little by being
apparently in the ship's port side, and yet leading, not to the open
sea, but to the entrance hall of the house. Between this door and the
stern gallery are bookshelves. There are electric light switches beside
the door leading to the hall and the glass doors in the stern gallery.
Against the starboard wall is a carpenter's bench. The vice has a board
in its jaws; and the floor is littered with shavings, overflowing from a
waste-paper basket. A couple of planes and a centrebit are on the bench.
In the same wall, between the bench and the windows, is a narrow doorway
with a half door, above which a glimpse of the room beyond shows that it
is a shelved pantry with bottles and kitchen crockery.

On the starboard side, but close to the middle, is a plain oak
drawing-table with drawing-board, T-square, straightedges, set
squares, mathematical instruments, saucers of water color, a tumbler
of discolored water, Indian ink, pencils, and brushes on it. The
drawing-board is set so that the draughtsman's chair has the window on
its left hand. On the floor at the end of the table, on its right, is a
ship's fire bucket. On the port side of the room, near the bookshelves,
is a sofa with its back to the windows. It is a sturdy mahogany article,
oddly upholstered in sailcloth, including the bolster, with a couple of
blankets hanging over the back. Between the sofa and the drawing-table
is a big wicker chair, with broad arms and a low sloping back, with its
back to the light. A small but stout table of teak, with a round top
and gate legs, stands against the port wall between the door and the
bookcase. It is the only article in the room that suggests (not at all
convincingly) a woman's hand in the furnishing. The uncarpeted floor of
narrow boards is caulked and holystoned like a deck.

The garden to which the glass doors lead dips to the south before the
landscape rises again to the hills. Emerging from the hollow is the
cupola of an observatory. Between the observatory and the house is a
flagstaff on a little esplanade, with a hammock on the east side and a
long garden seat on the west.

A young lady, gloved and hatted, with a dust coat on, is sitting in the
window-seat with her body twisted to enable her to look out at the
view. One hand props her chin: the other hangs down with a volume of the
Temple Shakespeare in it, and her finger stuck in the page she has been
reading.

A clock strikes six.

The young lady turns and looks at her watch. She rises with an air of
one who waits, and is almost at the end of her patience. She is a pretty
girl, slender, fair, and intelligent looking, nicely but not expensively
dressed, evidently not a smart idler.

With a sigh of weary resignation she comes to the draughtsman's chair;
sits down; and begins to read Shakespeare. Presently the book sinks to
her lap; her eyes close; and she dozes into a slumber.

An elderly womanservant comes in from the hall with three unopened
bottles of rum on a tray. She passes through and disappears in the
pantry without noticing the young lady. She places the bottles on the
shelf and fills her tray with empty bottles. As she returns with these,
the young lady lets her book drop, awakening herself, and startling the
womanservant so that she all but lets the tray fall.

THE WOMANSERVANT. God bless us! [The young lady picks up the book and
places it on the table]. Sorry to wake you, miss, I'm sure; but you are
a stranger to me. What might you be waiting here for now?

THE YOUNG LADY. Waiting for somebody to show some signs of knowing that
I have been invited here.

THE WOMANSERVANT. Oh, you're invited, are you? And has nobody come?
Dear! dear!

THE YOUNG LADY. A wild-looking old gentleman came and looked in at
the window; and I heard him calling out, "Nurse, there is a young and
attractive female waiting in the poop. Go and see what she wants." Are
you the nurse?

THE WOMANSERVANT. Yes, miss: I'm Nurse Guinness. That was old Captain
Shotover, Mrs Hushabye's father. I heard him roaring; but I thought it
was for something else. I suppose it was Mrs Hushabye that invited you,
ducky?

THE YOUNG LADY. I understood her to do so. But really I think I'd better
go.

NURSE GUINNESS. Oh, don't think of such a thing, miss. If Mrs Hushabye
has forgotten all about it, it will be a pleasant surprise for her to
see you, won't it?

THE YOUNG LADY. It has been a very unpleasant surprise to me to find
that nobody expects me.

NURSE GUINNESS. You'll get used to it, miss: this house is full of
surprises for them that don't know our ways.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [looking in from the hall suddenly: an ancient but
still hardy man with an immense white beard, in a reefer jacket with a
whistle hanging from his neck]. Nurse, there is a hold-all and a handbag
on the front steps for everybody to fall over. Also a tennis racquet.
Who the devil left them there?

THE YOUNG LADY. They are mine, I'm afraid.

THE CAPTAIN [advancing to the drawing-table]. Nurse, who is this
misguided and unfortunate young lady?

NURSE GUINNESS. She says Miss Hessy invited her, sir.

THE CAPTAIN. And had she no friend, no parents, to warn her against my
daughter's invitations? This is a pretty sort of house, by heavens! A
young and attractive lady is invited here. Her luggage is left on the
steps for hours; and she herself is deposited in the poop and abandoned,
tired and starving. This is our hospitality. These are our manners. No
room ready. No hot water. No welcoming hostess. Our visitor is to sleep
in the toolshed, and to wash in the duckpond.

NURSE GUINNESS. Now it's all right, Captain: I'll get the lady some tea;
and her room shall be ready before she has finished it. [To the young
lady]. Take off your hat, ducky; and make yourself at home [she goes to
the door leading to the hall].

THE CAPTAIN [as she passes him]. Ducky! Do you suppose, woman, that
because this young lady has been insulted and neglected, you have the
right to address her as you address my wretched children, whom you
have brought up in ignorance of the commonest decencies of social
intercourse?

NURSE GUINNESS. Never mind him, doty. [Quite unconcerned, she goes out
into the hall on her way to the kitchen].

THE CAPTAIN. Madam, will you favor me with your name? [He sits down in
the big wicker chair].

THE YOUNG LADY. My name is Ellie Dunn.

THE CAPTAIN. Dunn! I had a boatswain whose name was Dunn. He was
originally a pirate in China. He set up as a ship's chandler with stores
which I have every reason to believe he stole from me. No doubt he
became rich. Are you his daughter?

ELLIE [indignant]. No, certainly not. I am proud to be able to say that
though my father has not been a successful man, nobody has ever had one
word to say against him. I think my father is the best man I have ever
known.

THE CAPTAIN. He must be greatly changed. Has he attained the seventh
degree of concentration?

ELLIE. I don't understand.

THE CAPTAIN. But how could he, with a daughter? I, madam, have two
daughters. One of them is Hesione Hushabye, who invited you here. I
keep this house: she upsets it. I desire to attain the seventh degree
of concentration: she invites visitors and leaves me to entertain them.
[Nurse Guinness returns with the tea-tray, which she places on the teak
table]. I have a second daughter who is, thank God, in a remote part of
the Empire with her numskull of a husband. As a child she thought the
figure-head of my ship, the Dauntless, the most beautiful thing
on earth. He resembled it. He had the same expression: wooden yet
enterprising. She married him, and will never set foot in this house
again.

NURSE GUINNESS [carrying the table, with the tea-things on it, to
Ellie's side]. Indeed you never were more mistaken. She is in England
this very moment. You have been told three times this week that she is
coming home for a year for her health. And very glad you should be to
see your own daughter again after all these years.

THE CAPTAIN. I am not glad. The natural term of the affection of the
human animal for its offspring is six years. My daughter Ariadne was
born when I was forty-six. I am now eighty-eight. If she comes, I am not
at home. If she wants anything, let her take it. If she asks for me, let
her be informed that I am extremely old, and have totally forgotten her.

NURSE GUINNESS. That's no talk to offer to a young lady. Here, ducky,
have some tea; and don't listen to him [she pours out a cup of tea].

THE CAPTAIN [rising wrathfully]. Now before high heaven they have given
this innocent child Indian tea: the stuff they tan their own leather
insides with. [He seizes the cup and the tea-pot and empties both into
the leathern bucket].

ELLIE [almost in tears]. Oh, please! I am so tired. I should have been
glad of anything.

NURSE GUINNESS. Oh, what a thing to do! The poor lamb is ready to drop.

THE CAPTAIN. You shall have some of my tea. Do not touch that fly-blown
cake: nobody eats it here except the dogs. [He disappears into the
pantry].

NURSE GUINNESS. There's a man for you! They say he sold himself to the
devil in Zanzibar before he was a captain; and the older he grows the
more I believe them.

A WOMAN'S VOICE [in the hall]. Is anyone at home? Hesione! Nurse! Papa!
Do come, somebody; and take in my luggage.

Thumping heard, as of an umbrella, on the wainscot.

NURSE GUINNESS. My gracious! It's Miss Addy, Lady Utterword, Mrs
Hushabye's sister: the one I told the captain about. [Calling]. Coming,
Miss, coming.

She carries the table back to its place by the door and is harrying out
when she is intercepted by Lady Utterword, who bursts in much flustered.
Lady Utterword, a blonde, is very handsome, very well dressed, and so
precipitate in speech and action that the first impression (erroneous)
is one of comic silliness.

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, is that you, Nurse? How are you? You don't look a
day older. Is nobody at home? Where is Hesione? Doesn't she expect me?
Where are the servants? Whose luggage is that on the steps? Where's
papa? Is everybody asleep? [Seeing Ellie]. Oh! I beg your pardon. I
suppose you are one of my nieces. [Approaching her with outstretched
arms]. Come and kiss your aunt, darling.

ELLIE. I'm only a visitor. It is my luggage on the steps.

NURSE GUINNESS. I'll go get you some fresh tea, ducky. [She takes up the
tray].

ELLIE. But the old gentleman said he would make some himself.

NURSE GUINNESS. Bless you! he's forgotten what he went for already. His
mind wanders from one thing to another.

LADY UTTERWORD. Papa, I suppose?

NURSE GUINNESS. Yes, Miss.

LADY UTTERWORD [vehemently]. Don't be silly, Nurse. Don't call me Miss.

NURSE GUINNESS [placidly]. No, lovey [she goes out with the tea-tray].

LADY UTTERWORD [sitting down with a flounce on the sofa]. I know what
you must feel. Oh, this house, this house! I come back to it after
twenty-three years; and it is just the same: the luggage lying on the
steps, the servants spoilt and impossible, nobody at home to receive
anybody, no regular meals, nobody ever hungry because they are always
gnawing bread and butter or munching apples, and, what is worse, the
same disorder in ideas, in talk, in feeling. When I was a child I was
used to it: I had never known anything better, though I was unhappy, and
longed all the time--oh, how I longed!--to be respectable, to be a lady,
to live as others did, not to have to think of everything for myself.
I married at nineteen to escape from it. My husband is Sir Hastings
Utterword, who has been governor of all the crown colonies in
succession. I have always been the mistress of Government House. I
have been so happy: I had forgotten that people could live like this. I
wanted to see my father, my sister, my nephews and nieces (one ought
to, you know), and I was looking forward to it. And now the state of
the house! the way I'm received! the casual impudence of that woman
Guinness, our old nurse! really Hesione might at least have been here:
some preparation might have been made for me. You must excuse my
going on in this way; but I am really very much hurt and annoyed and
disillusioned: and if I had realized it was to be like this, I wouldn't
have come. I have a great mind to go away without another word [she is
on the point of weeping].

ELLIE [also very miserable]. Nobody has been here to receive me either.
I thought I ought to go away too. But how can I, Lady Utterword? My
luggage is on the steps; and the station fly has gone.

The captain emerges from the pantry with a tray of Chinese lacquer and
a very fine tea-set on it. He rests it provisionally on the end of the
table; snatches away the drawing-board, which he stands on the floor
against table legs; and puts the tray in the space thus cleared. Ellie
pours out a cup greedily.

THE CAPTAIN. Your tea, young lady. What! another lady! I must fetch
another cup [he makes for the pantry].

LADY UTTERWORD [rising from the sofa, suffused with emotion]. Papa!
Don't you know me? I'm your daughter.

THE CAPTAIN. Nonsense! my daughter's upstairs asleep. [He vanishes
through the half door].

Lady Utterword retires to the window to conceal her tears.

ELLIE [going to her with the cup]. Don't be so distressed. Have this cup
of tea. He is very old and very strange: he has been just like that to
me. I know how dreadful it must be: my own father is all the world to
me. Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean it.

The captain returns with another cup.

THE CAPTAIN. Now we are complete. [He places it on the tray].

LADY UTTERWORD [hysterically]. Papa, you can't have forgotten me. I am
Ariadne. I'm little Paddy Patkins. Won't you kiss me? [She goes to him
and throws her arms round his neck].

THE CAPTAIN [woodenly enduring her embrace]. How can you be Ariadne? You
are a middle-aged woman: well preserved, madam, but no longer young.

LADY UTTERWORD. But think of all the years and years I have been away,
Papa. I have had to grow old, like other people.

THE CAPTAIN [disengaging himself]. You should grow out of kissing
strange men: they may be striving to attain the seventh degree of
concentration.

LADY UTTERWORD. But I'm your daughter. You haven't seen me for years.

THE CAPTAIN. So much the worse! When our relatives are at home, we have
to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure
them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence
by dwelling on their vices. That is how I have come to think my absent
daughter Ariadne a perfect fiend; so do not try to ingratiate yourself
here by impersonating her [he walks firmly away to the other side of the
room].

LADY UTTERWORD. Ingratiating myself indeed! [With dignity]. Very
well, papa. [She sits down at the drawing-table and pours out tea for
herself].

THE CAPTAIN. I am neglecting my social duties. You remember Dunn? Billy
Dunn?

LADY UTTERWORD. DO you mean that villainous sailor who robbed you?

THE CAPTAIN [introducing Ellie]. His daughter. [He sits down on the
sofa].

ELLIE [protesting]. No--

Nurse Guinness returns with fresh tea.

THE CAPTAIN. Take that hogwash away. Do you hear?

NURSE. You've actually remembered about the tea! [To Ellie]. Oh, miss,
he didn't forget you after all! You HAVE made an impression.

THE CAPTAIN [gloomily]. Youth! beauty! novelty! They are badly wanted in
this house. I am excessively old. Hesione is only moderately young. Her
children are not youthful.

LADY UTTERWORD. How can children be expected to be youthful in this
house? Almost before we could speak we were filled with notions that
might have been all very well for pagan philosophers of fifty, but were
certainly quite unfit for respectable people of any age.

NURSE. You were always for respectability, Miss Addy.

LADY UTTERWORD. Nurse, will you please remember that I am Lady
Utterword, and not Miss Addy, nor lovey, nor darling, nor doty? Do you
hear?

NURSE. Yes, ducky: all right. I'll tell them all they must call you My
Lady. [She takes her tray out with undisturbed placidity].

LADY UTTERWORD. What comfort? what sense is there in having servants
with no manners?

ELLIE [rising and coming to the table to put down her empty cup]. Lady
Utterword, do you think Mrs Hushabye really expects me?

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, don't ask me. You can see for yourself that I've
just arrived; her only sister, after twenty-three years' absence! and it
seems that I am not expected.

THE CAPTAIN. What does it matter whether the young lady is expected or
not? She is welcome. There are beds: there is food. I'll find a room for
her myself [he makes for the door].

ELLIE [following him to stop him]. Oh, please--[He goes out]. Lady
Utterword, I don't know what to do. Your father persists in believing
that my father is some sailor who robbed him.

LADY UTTERWORD. You had better pretend not to notice it. My father is a
very clever man; but he always forgot things; and now that he is old, of
course he is worse. And I must warn you that it is sometimes very hard
to feel quite sure that he really forgets.

Mrs Hushabye bursts into the room tempestuously and embraces Ellie. She
is a couple of years older than Lady Utterword, and even better looking.
She has magnificent black hair, eyes like the fishpools of Heshbon, and
a nobly modelled neck, short at the back and low between her shoulders
in front. Unlike her sister she is uncorseted and dressed anyhow in a
rich robe of black pile that shows off her white skin and statuesque
contour.

MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie, my darling, my pettikins [kissing her], how long
have you been here? I've been at home all the time: I was putting
flowers and things in your room; and when I just sat down for a moment
to try how comfortable the armchair was I went off to sleep. Papa woke
me and told me you were here. Fancy your finding no one, and being
neglected and abandoned. [Kissing her again]. My poor love! [She
deposits Ellie on the sofa. Meanwhile Ariadne has left the table and
come over to claim her share of attention]. Oh! you've brought someone
with you. Introduce me.

LADY UTTERWORD. Hesione, is it possible that you don't know me?

MRS HUSHABYE [conventionally]. Of course I remember your face quite
well. Where have we met?

LADY UTTERWORD. Didn't Papa tell you I was here? Oh! this is really too
much. [She throws herself sulkily into the big chair].

MRS HUSHABYE. Papa!

LADY UTTERWORD. Yes, Papa. Our papa, you unfeeling wretch! [Rising
angrily]. I'll go straight to a hotel.

MRS HUSHABYE [seizing her by the shoulders]. My goodness gracious
goodness, you don't mean to say that you're Addy!

LADY UTTERWORD. I certainly am Addy; and I don't think I can be so
changed that you would not have recognized me if you had any real
affection for me. And Papa didn't think me even worth mentioning!

MRS HUSHABYE. What a lark! Sit down [she pushes her back into the chair
instead of kissing her, and posts herself behind it]. You DO look
a swell. You're much handsomer than you used to be. You've made the
acquaintance of Ellie, of course. She is going to marry a perfect hog
of a millionaire for the sake of her father, who is as poor as a church
mouse; and you must help me to stop her.

ELLIE. Oh, please, Hesione!

MRS HUSHABYE. My pettikins, the man's coming here today with your father
to begin persecuting you; and everybody will see the state of the case
in ten minutes; so what's the use of making a secret of it?

ELLIE. He is not a hog, Hesione. You don't know how wonderfully good he
was to my father, and how deeply grateful I am to him.