E. J. Wheeler. “I’d give my genius for your digestion any day.”
Octavian.
Why not? It seems to me an excellent arrangement. Very thoughtful of her. Very thoughtful and considerate.
Agrippa.
But we want her for that Triumph of yours.
Octavian.
Never mind. After all, whatisa Triumph? Disagreeable for her. A bore for us. Let her die now, by all means, if she prefers it.
Agrippa.
[Impatiently.] Don’tyoutry and be magnanimous too. Leave that to your uncle. He did it better.
Octavian.
[Wearily.] My dear Agrippa, how stupid you are! What possible use can a quite plain and middle-aged lady be in a triumphal procession? If Cleopatra were still attractive I should say, “Save her, by all means.” As she isn’t, [yawning] I think we may let her die her own way without being charged with excessive magnanimity.
Agrippa.
[Regretfully.] Still Ishouldhave liked to have seen her brought to Rome.
Octavian.
Ah! I shall be quite contented to see her comfortably in her coffin in Egypt. We’ll let her be buried beside Antony. It will gratify the Egyptians, and it won’thurt us. See to it, there’s a good fellow.
[ExitAgrippa.Octavianleans back, and falls asleep on the throne.
Curtain.
A DRAMATIC PROLOGUE.
Those persons who have seen Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s magnificent performance in “The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith” will have probably gone away with a quite false impression of the gentleman with whom Agnes Ebbsmith spent her eight years of married life. “For the first twelve months,” she declares bitterly in the first act, “he treated me like a woman in a harem, for the rest of the time like a beast of burden.” This is not quite just to poor Ebbsmith, who was a good sort of fellow in his commonplace way, and it is manifestly unfair that the audience should have no opportunity of hearing his side of the question. An attempt is made to remedy this injustice in the following Prologue, which all fair-minded persons are entreated to read before seeing Mr. Pinero’s very clever play.
Scene.—The dining-room of theEbbsmiths’ house in West Kensington.Agnesand her husband are at breakfast. They have been married seven years. She looks much as we see her in the early acts of the play—gaunt, pale, badly dressed. He is a careworn man with hair slightly grey at the temples, an anxious forehead and sad eyes. He is glancing through the “Standard” in the intervals of eating his bacon. She is absorbed in the “Morning Screamer,” one of the more violent Socialist-Radical organs of that day. Presently Ebbsmith looks up.
Ebbsmith.
You won’t forget, Agnes, that we are expecting people to dinner to-night?
Agnes.
[Putting down her paper with an air of patient endurance.] Eh?
Ebbsmith.
[Mildly.] I was saying, dear, if you will give me your attention for a moment, that I hoped you would not forget that Sir Myles Jawkins and his wife and the Spencers and the Thorntons were dining here to-night.
Agnes.
[Contemptuously.] You seem very anxious that I should remember thatLadyJawkins is honouring us with her company!
Ebbsmith.
I only meant that I hoped you had told Jane about dinner. Last time the Jawkinses came you may recollect that you had omitted to order anything for them to eat, and when they arrived there was nothing in the house but some soup, a little cold mutton and a rice-pudding.
Agnes.
Very well [returns to her paper.]
Ebbsmith.
Thank you. And, Agnes, if you could manage to be dressed in time to receive them I should be very much obliged.
Agnes.
I?
Ebbsmith.
Of course. I suppose you will be here to entertain our guests?
Agnes.
Yourguests, you mean.
Ebbsmith.
My dear Agnes, surely my guests are your guests also.
Agnes.
[Breaking out.] As long as the present unjust and oppressive marriage laws remain in force——
Ebbsmith.
[Interrupting.] I don’t think we need go into the question of the alteration of the marriage laws.
Agnes.
Ah, yes. You always refuse to listen to my arguments on that subject. You know they are unanswerable.
Ebbsmith.
[Patiently.] I only meant that there would hardly be time to discuss the matter at breakfast.
Agnes.
[Vehemently.] A paltry evasion!
Ebbsmith.
Still, I assume that you will be here to receive our guests—my guests if you prefer it—to-night?
Agnes.
Do you make a point of always being at home to receivemyguests?
Ebbsmith.
Those Anarchist people whom you are constantly asking to tea? Certainly not.
Agnes.
[With triumphant logic.] Then may I ask why I should be at home to receive the Jawkinses?
Ebbsmith.
My dear, you surely realise that the cases are hardly parallel. The only time I was present at one of your Revolutionary tea-parties the guests consisted of a Hyde Park orator who dropped his h’s, a cobbler who had turned Socialist by way of increasing his importance in the eyes of the community, three ladies who were either living apart from their husbands or living with the husbands of other ladies, and a Polish refugee who had been convicted, quite justly, of murder. You cannot pretend to compare the Jawkinses with such people.
Agnes.
Indeed, I can. [Rhetorically.] In a properly organized Society——
Ebbsmith.
[Testily.] I really can’t stop to re-organize Society now. I am due at my chambers in half-an-hour.
Agnes.
[Sullenly.] As you decline to listen to what I have to say, I may as well tell you at once that I shallnotbe at home to dinner to-night.
Ebbsmith.
[Controlling his temper with an effort.] May I ask your reason?
Agnes.
Because I have to be at the meeting of the Anti-marriage Association.
Ebbsmith.
Can’t you send an excuse?
Agnes.
Send an excuse! Throw up a meeting called to discuss an important Public question becauseyouhave asked a few barristers and their wives to dine! You must be mad.
Ebbsmith.
Well, I must put them off, I suppose. What night next week will suit you to meet them? Thursday?
Agnes.
On Thursday I am addressing a meeting of the Society for the Encouragement of Divorce.
Ebbsmith.
Friday?
Agnes.
[Coldly.] Friday, as you know, is the weekly meeting of the Agamists’ League.
Ebbsmith.
Saturday?
Agnes.
On Saturday I am speaking on Free Union for the People at Battersea.
Ebbsmith.
Can you suggest an evening?
Agnes.
[Firmly.] No. I think the time has come to make a stand against the convention which demands that a wife should preside at her husband’s dinner-parties. It is an absurdity. Away with it!
Ebbsmith.
[Alarmed.] But, Agnes! Think what you are doing. You don’t want to offend these people. Spencer and Thornton are useful men to know, and Jawkins puts a lot of work in my way.
E. J. Wheeler. “Friday, you know, is the meeting of the Agamists’ League.”
Agnes.
[With magnificent scorn.] How like a man! And soIam to be civil to this Jawkins person because he “puts a lot of work in your way!”
Ebbsmith.
[Meekly.] Well, you know, my dear, I have to make an income somehow.
Agnes.
I would sooner starve than resort to such truckling!
Ebbsmith.
[Gloomily.] We are likely to do that, sooner or later, in any case.
Agnes.
What do you mean?
Ebbsmith.
[Diffidently.] Your—ahem!—somewhat subversive tenets, my love, are not precisely calculated to improve my professional prospects.
Agnes.
What haveIto do withyourprospects?
Ebbsmith.
The accounts of your meetings which appear in the newspapers are not likely to encourage respectable solicitors to send me briefs.
Agnes.
[Indifferently.] Indeed!
Ebbsmith.
Here’s a report in to-day’sStandardof a meeting addressed by you last night which would certainly not have that effect. Shall I read it to you?
Agnes.
If you wish it.
Ebbsmith.
[Reads.] “The meeting which was held in St. Luke’s parish last night under the auspices of the Polyandrous Club proved to be of an unusually exciting description. The lecturer was Mrs. John Ebbsmith, wife of the well-known barrister of that name.” [Breaking off.] Really, Agnes, I thinkmyname need not have been dragged into the business.
Agnes.
Go on.
Ebbsmith.
“As soon as the doors were opened the place of meeting—the Iron Hall, Carter Street—was filled with a compact body of roughs assembled from the neighbouring streets, and there seemed every prospect of disorderly scenes. The appearance of Mrs. Ebbsmith on the platform was greeted with cheers and cries of ‘Mad Agnes!’” Surely, my dear, you must recognise that my professional reputation is endangered when my wife is reported in the newspapers as addressing meetings in discreditable parts of London, where her appearance is greeted with shouts of ‘Mad Agnes!’
Agnes.
Nonsense! Who is likely to read an obscure paragraph like that?
Ebbsmith.
Obscure paragraph! My dear Agnes, theStandardhas a leading article on it. Listen to this:—“Mrs. Ebbsmith’s crusade against the institution of marriage is again attracting unfavourable attention. Last night in St. Luke’s she once more attempted to ventilate her preposterous schemes ... crack-brained crusade ... bellowing revolutionary nonsense on obscure platforms.... This absurd visionary, whom her audiences not inappropriately nickname ‘Mad Agnes’.... Ultimately the meeting had to be broken up by the police.... We cannot understand how a man in Mr. Ebbsmith’s position can allow himself to be made ridiculous.” [Almost weeping.] I do think they might leavemyname out of it. In a leading article too!
Agnes.
Is there any more of the stuff?
Ebbsmith.
Another half column. Do, my dear, to oblige me, find some less ostentatious method of making known your views on the subject of marriage.
Agnes.
[Anticipating a remark subsequently made by theDuke of St. Olpherts.] Unostentatious immodesty is not part of my programme.
Ebbsmith.
[Humbly.] Could you not, for my sake, consent to take a lessprominentpart in the movement?
Agnes.
[Enthusiastically.] But I want to be among the Leaders—the Leaders! That will be my hour.
Ebbsmith.
[Puzzled.] Your hour? I don’t think I quite understand you.
Agnes.
There’s only one hour in a woman’s life—when she’s defying her husband, wrecking his happiness and blasting his prospects. That is her hour! Let her make the most of every second of it!
Ebbsmith.
[Wearily.] Well, my dear, when it’s over, you’ll have the satisfaction of counting the departing footsteps of a ruined man.
Agnes.
Departing?
Ebbsmith.
Certainly. You and your crusade between them willhave killed me. But I must go now. I ought to be at my chambers in ten minutes, and I must go round and make my excuses to Jawkins some time this morning. Tell Jane not to bother about dinner to-night. I shall dine at the Club.
[Exit.
Curtain.
A DRAMATIZED VERSION.
When it was announced recently in an English Daily Paper that a drama founded upon Fitzgerald’s version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám had been compounded in the United States, and would shortly be seen on the stage, many people may have wondered how it was done. It was done as follows:—
Scene.—Courtyard of the deserted palace ofJamshyd, canopied by that inverted bowl commonly called the sky. To right, a tavern—not deserted. To left, a potter’s house. At back, the grave ofBahrám, whence a sound of snoring proceeds. A wild ass stamps fitfully upon it. It is four o’clock in the morning, and the “false dawn” shows in the sky. In the centre of the stage stand a lion and a lizard, eyeing each other mistrustfully.
Lion.
Look here, doyoukeep these courts, or do I?
Lizard.
[Resentfully.] I don’t know. I believe we both keep them.
Lion.
[Sarcastically.]Doyou? Then I venture to differ from you.
Lizard.
Perhaps you’d rather we took turns?
Lion.
Oh, no, I wouldn’t. I mean to have this job to myself.
[He and the lizard close in mortal combat. After a gallant struggle the latter is killed, and the lion proceeds to eat him. Suddenly a shadowy form issues from the grave at back of stage.
Lion.
Bahrám, by Jove! Confound that jackass!
[Bolts remains of lizard and then bolts himself, pursued by shadowy form.
Wild Ass.
They said I couldn’t wake him. But I knew better! Hee-haw!
[Exit in triumph.]
[A sound in revelry becomes noticeable from the tavern. A crowd gathers outside. The voice ofOmar, rather tipsy, is heard.
Omar.
When all the temple—hic!—is prepared within, why nods the lousy worshipper outside?
[A cock crows, and the sun rises.
Crowd.
[Shouting in unison.] Open then the door. You know how little while we have to stay. And, once departed, goodness only knows when we shall get back again!
Omar.
[Opening the door and appearing unsteadily on the threshold.] You can’t come in. It’s—hic—full.
[Closes door again.
Crowd.
I say, what rot!
[Exeunt, depressed.
Nightingale.
[Jubilantly from tree.] Wine! Wine! Red wine!
Rose.
[From neighbouring bush, much shocked.] My dear, you don’t know how your passion for alcohol shocks me.
Nightingale.
Oh yes I do. But every morning brings a thousand roses. After all, you’re cheap. Jamshyd and I like our liquor, and plenty of it.
Rose.
[Shaking her head in disapproval.] I’ve heard he drank deep.
Nightingale.
Of course he did. You should have seen him when Hátim called to supper! He simply went for it!
Rose.
[Blushing crimson.] How dreadful!
Nightingale.
[Contemptuously.] I dare say. But you wouldn’t be so red yourself if some buried Cæsar didn’t fertilize your roots. Why, even the hyacinth’s past isn’t altogether creditable, and as for the grass—why, I could tell you things about the grass that would scare the soul out of a vegetable!
Rose.
[Annoyed.] I’m not a vegetable.
Nightingale.
Well, well, I can’t stay to argue with you. I’ve but a little time to flutter myself.
[Exit on the wing.
[EnterOmarfrom tavern. He is by this time magnificently intoxicated and is leaning on the arm of a fascinatingSáki. He has a jug of wine in his hand.
Omar.
[Trying to kiss her.] Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears to-day of past regrets and future fears. To-morrow! Why to-morrow I may be——
Sáki.
[Interrupting.] I know what you’re going to say. To-morrow you’ll be sober. But you won’t.Iknow you. Go home!
Omar.
Home!—hic. What do I want with home? A book of verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread—no, no bread, two jugs of wine—and thou [puts arm round her waist] beside me singing like a bulbul.
[Sings uproariously.
For to-night we’ll merry be!For to-night——
For to-night we’ll merry be!For to-night——
For to-night we’ll merry be!
For to-night——
Sáki.
Fie! An old man like you!
Omar.
Old! Thank goodness Iamold. When I was young I went to school and heard the sages. Didn’t learn muchthere! They said I came like water and went like wind. Horrid chilly Band-of-Hope sort of doctrine. I know better now.
[Drinks from the jug in his hand.
Sáki.
[Watching him anxiously.] Take care. You’ll spill it.
Omar.
Never mind. It won’t be wasted. All goes to quench some poor beggar’s thirst down there [points below]. Dare say he needs it—hic.
Sáki.
[Shocked.] How can you talk so!
Omar.
[Growing argumentative in his cups.] I must abjure the balm of life,Imust! I must give up wine for fear of—hic—What is it I’m to fear? Gout, I suppose. Not I!
[Takes another drink.
Sáki.
[Trying to take jug from him.] There, there, you’ve had enough.
Omar.
[Fast losing coherence in his extreme intoxication.] I wantto talk to you about Thee and Me. That’s what I want to talk about. [Counting on his fingers.] You see there’s the Thee in Me and there’s the Me in Thee. That’s myshticism, that is. Difficult word to say, mysticishm. Must light lamp and see if I can’t find it. Must be somewhere about.
E. J. Wheeler. “Myshticism, difficult word to say, mysticishm.”
Sáki.
You’re drunk, that’s what you are. Disgracefully drunk.
Omar.
Of course I’m drunk. I am to-day what I was yesterday, and to-morrow I shall not be less. Kiss me.
Sáki.
[Boxing his ears.] I won’t have it, I tell you. I’m a respectable Sáki; and you’re not to take liberties, or I’ll leave you to find your way home alone.
Omar.
[Becoming maudlin.] Don’t leave me, my rose, my bullfinch—I mean bulbul. You know how my road is beset with pitfall—hic!—and with gin.
Sáki.
[Disgusted.] Plenty of gin,Iknow. You never can pass a public-house.
Omar.
[Struck with the splendour of the idea.] I say—hic!—let’s fling the dust aside, and naked on the air of Heaven ride. It’s shame not to do it!
[Flings off hat, and stamps on it by way of preliminary.
Sáki.
[Scandalised.] If you take anything else off I shall call the police.
[Exit hurriedly.
Omar.
[Terrified.] Here, Sáki, come back. How am I to find my way without you? [A pause.] What’s come to the girl? I only spoke—hic—meta—phorically. Difficult word to say, meta—phorically! [Longer pause.] How am I to get home? Can’t go ’lone. Must wait for someone to come along. [Peers tipsily about him.] Strange, isn’t it, that though lots of people go along here every day, not one returns to tell me of the road! Very strange. S’pose must sleep here.... S’pose——
[Rolls into ditch and falls asleep.
[The curtain falls for a moment. When it rises again, day is departing and it is growing dark.Omaris still in his ditch. The door of the potter’s house, to the left of the stage, is open, thePotterhaving betaken himself to the tavern opposite, and the pots within are arguing fiercely.
First Pot.
Don’t tell me I was only made to be broken. I know better.
Second Pot.
Even a peevish boy wouldn’t breakme! The Potter would whack him if he did!
Third Pot.
[Of a more ungainly make.] Depends on what he drank out of you.
Second Pot.
What’s that you say, you lopsided object?
Third Pot.
That’s right. Sneer at me! ’Tisn’t my fault if the potter’s hand shook when he made me. He was not sober.
Fourth Pot.
[I think a Súfi pipkin.] It’s all very well to talk about pot and potter. WhatIwant to know is, what did the pot call the kettle?
Third Pot.
[Grumbling.] I believe my clay’s too dry. That’s what’s the matter withme!
[The moon rises. A step is heard without.
Several Pots.
Hark, there’s the potter! Can’t you hear his boots creaking?
EnterPotterfrom tavern.
Potter.
[Crossly.] Shut up in there, or I’ll break some of you.
[The pots tremble and are silent.
Potter.
[Seeing Omar.] Hullo. Come out of that. You’re inmyditch. [Lifts him into sitting posture by the collar.]
Omar.
[Rubbing his eyes.] Eh! What’s that? Oh, my head! my head! [Clasps it between his hands.]
Potter.
Get up! You’ve been drinking.
Omar.
[Dazed at his penetration.] I wonder how you guessed that!
Potter.
It’s plain enough. You’ve been providing your fading life with liquor. I can see that with half an eye.
Omar.
I have, I have. I’ve drowned my glory in a shallow cup, and my head’s very bad.
Potter.
You should take the pledge.
Omar.
Oh! I’ve sworn to give up drink lots of times. [Doubtfully.] But was I sober when I swore? Tell me that.
Potter.
[Scratching his head.] Dunnow.
Omar.
[Staggering to his feet.] Would but the desert of the fountain yield one glimpse! In more prosaic language, could you get me something to drink? I’m rather star-scattered myself and the grass is wet.
[Pottergoes to house and takes up third pot at random.
Third Pot.
[Delighted.] Now he’s going to fill me with the old familiar juice!
[Potterfills him with water and returns toOmar.
Third Pot.
[Disgusted.] Water! Well, I’m dashed!
Omar.
Many thanks, O Sáki. Here’s to you. [Drains beaker.] Ugh! don’t think much of your liquor. I wish the moon wouldn’t look at me like that. She’s a beastly colour. Why doesn’t she look the other way?
Potter.
[Sarcastically.] Wants to seeyou, I suppose.
Omar.
[Darkly.] Well, some day she won’t. That’s all. Farewell, O Sáki. Yours is a joyous errand. But I wish you had put something stronger in the glass. [Handing it back to him.] Turn it down, there’s a good fellow.
[Exit.
Curtain.
THE END.
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.