Part 2
CRICHTON (eagerly). Yes, my lord, it is. That is what I have been striving to point out to your lordship.
AGATHA (to CATHERINE). What is the matter with Fisher? She is looking daggers.
CATHERINE. The tedious creature; some question of etiquette, I suppose.
(She sails across to FISHER.)
How are you, Fisher?
FISHER (with a toss of her head). I am nothing, my lady, I am nothing at all.
AGATHA. Oh dear, who says so?
FISHER (affronted). His lordship has asked that kitchen wench to have a second cup of tea.
CATHERINE. But why not?
FISHER. If it pleases his lordship to offer it to her before offering it to me--
AGATHA. So that is it. Do you want another cup of tea, Fisher?
FISHER. No, my lady--but my position--I should have been asked first.
AGATHA. Oh dear.
(All this has taken some time, and by now the feeble appetites of the uncomfortable guests have been satiated. But they know there is still another ordeal to face--his lordship’s monthly speech. Every one awaits it with misgiving--the servants lest they should applaud, as last time, in the wrong place, and the daughters because he may be personal about them, as the time before. ERNEST is annoyed that there should be this speech at all when there is such a much better one coming, and BROCKLEHURST foresees the degradation of the peerage. All are thinking of themselves alone save CRICHTON, who knows his master’s weakness, and fears he may stick in the middle. LORD LOAM, however, advances cheerfully to his doom. He sees ERNEST’S stool, and artfully stands on it, to his nephew’s natural indignation. The three ladies knit their lips, the servants look down their noses, and the address begins.)
LORD LOAM. My friends, I am glad to see you all looking so happy. It used to be predicted by the scoffer that these meetings would prove distasteful to you. Are they distasteful? I hear you laughing at the question.
(He has not heard them, but he hears them now, the watchful CRICHTON giving them a lead.)
No harm in saying that among us to-day is one who was formerly hostile to the movement, but who to-day has been won over. I refer to Lord Brocklehurst, who, I am sure, will presently say to me that if the charming lady now by his side has derived as much pleasure from his company as he has derived from hers, he will be more than satisfied.
(All look at TWEENY, who trembles.)
For the time being the artificial and unnatural--I say unnatural (glaring at CRICHTON, who bows slightly)--barriers of society are swept away. Would that they could be swept away for ever.
(The PAGEBOY cheers, and has the one moment of prominence in his life. He grows up, marries and has children, but is never really heard of again.)
But that is entirely and utterly out of the question. And now for a few months we are to be separated. As you know, my daughters and Mr. Ernest and Mr. Treherne are to accompany me on my yacht, on a voyage to distant parts of the earth. In less than forty-eight hours we shall be under weigh.
(But for CRICHTON’S eye the reckless PAGEBOY would repeat his success.)
Do not think our life on the yacht is to be one long idle holiday. My views on the excessive luxury of the day are well known, and what I preach I am resolved to practise. I have therefore decided that my daughters, instead of having one maid each as at present, shall on this voyage have but one maid between them.
(Three maids rise; also three mistresses.)
CRICHTON. My lord!
LORD LOAM. My mind is made up.
ERNEST. I cordially agree.
LORD LOAM. And now, my friends, I should like to think that there is some piece of advice I might give you, some thought, some noble saying over which you might ponder in my absence. In this connection I remember a proverb, which has had a great effect on my own life. I first heard it many years ago. I have never forgotten it. It constantly cheers and guides me. That proverb is--that proverb was--the proverb I speak of--
(He grows pale and taps his forehead.)
LADY MARY. Oh dear, I believe he has forgotten it.
LORD LOAM (desperately). The proverb--that proverb to which I refer--
(Alas, it has gone. The distress is general. He has not even the sense to sit down. He gropes for the proverb in the air. They try applause, but it is no help.)
I have it now--(not he).
LADY MARY (with confidence). Crichton.
(He does not fail her. As quietly as if he were in goloshes, mind as well as feet, he dismisses the domestics; they go according to precedence as they entered, yet, in a moment, they are gone. Then he signs to MR. TREHERNE, and they conduct LORD LOAM with dignity from the room. His hands are still catching flies; he still mutters, ‘The proverb--that proverb’; but he continues, owing to CRICHTON’S skilful treatment, to look every inch a peer. The ladies have now an opportunity to air their indignation.)
LADY MARY. One maid among three grown women!
LORD BROCKLEHURST. Mary, I think I had better go. That dreadful kitchenmaid--
LADY MARY. I can’t blame you, George.
(He salutes her.)
LORD BROCKLEHURST. Your father’s views are shocking to me, and I am glad I am not to be one of the party on the yacht. My respect for myself, Mary, my natural anxiety as to what mother will say. I shall see you, darling, before you sail.
(He bows to the others and goes.)
ERNEST. Selfish brute, only thinking of himself. What about my speech?
LADY MARY. One maid among three of us. What’s to be done?
ERNEST. Pooh! You must do for yourselves, that’s all.
LADY MARY. Do for ourselves. How can we know where our things are kept?
AGATHA. Are you aware that dresses button up the back?
CATHERINE. How are we to get into our shoes and be prepared for the carriage?
LADY MARY. Who is to put us to bed, and who is to get us up, and how shall we ever know it’s morning if there is no one to pull up the blinds?
(CRICHTON crosses on his way out.)
ERNEST. How is his lordship now?
CRICHTON. A little easier, sir.
LADY MARY. Crichton, send Fisher to me.
(He goes.)
ERNEST. I have no pity for you girls, I--
LADY MARY. Ernest, go away, and don’t insult the broken-hearted.
ERNEST. And uncommon glad I am to go. Ta-ta, all of you. He asked me to say a few words. I came here to say a few words, and I’m not at all sure that I couldn’t bring an action against him.
(He departs, feeling that he has left a dart behind him. The girls are alone with their tragic thoughts.)
LADY MARY (becomes a mother to the younger ones at last). My poor sisters, come here. (They go to her doubtfully.) We must make this draw us closer together. I shall do my best to help you in every way. Just now I cannot think of myself at all.
AGATHA. But how unlike you, Mary.
LADY MARY. It is my duty to protect my sisters.
CATHERINE. I never knew her so sweet before, Agatha. (Cautiously.) What do you propose to do, Mary?
LADY MARY. I propose when we are on the yacht to lend Fisher to you when I don’t need her myself.
AGATHA. Fisher?
LADY MARY (who has the most character of the three). Of course, as the eldest, I have decided that it is my maid we shall take with us.
CATHERINE (speaking also for AGATHA). Mary, you toad.
AGATHA. Nothing on earth would induce Fisher to lift her hand for either me or Catherine.
LADY MARY. I was afraid of it, Agatha. That is why I am so sorry for you.
(The further exchange of pleasantries is interrupted by the arrival of FISHER.)
LADY MARY. Fisher, you heard what his lordship said?
FISHER. Yes, my lady.
LADY MARY (coldly, though the others would have tried blandishment). You have given me some satisfaction of late, Fisher, and to mark my approval I have decided that you shall be the maid who accompanies us.
FISHER (acidly). I thank you, my lady.
LADY MARY. That is all; you may go.
FISHER (rapping it out). If you please, my lady, I wish to give notice.
(CATHERINE and AGATHA gleam, but LADY MARY is of sterner stuff.)
LADY MARY (taking up a book). Oh, certainly--you may go.
CATHERINE. But why, Fisher?
FISHER. I could not undertake, my lady, to wait upon three. We don’t do it. (In an indignant outburst to LADY MARY.) Oh, my lady, to think that this affront--
LADY MARY (looking up). I thought I told you to go, Fisher.
(FISHER stands for a moment irresolute; then goes. As soon as she has gone LADY MARY puts down her book and weeps. She is a pretty woman, but this is the only pretty thing we have seen her do yet.)
AGATHA (succinctly). Serves you right.
(CRICHTON comes.)
CATHERINE. It will be Simmons after all. Send Simmons to me.
CRICHTON (after hesitating). My lady, might I venture to speak?
CATHERINE. What is it?
CRICHTON. I happen to know, your ladyship, that Simmons desires to give notice for the same reason as Fisher.
CATHERINE. Oh!
AGATHA (triumphant). Then, Catherine, we take Jeanne.
CRICHTON. And Jeanne also, my lady.
(LADY MARY is reading, indifferent though the heavens fall, but her sisters are not ashamed to show their despair to CRICHTON.)
AGATHA. We can’t blame them. Could any maid who respected herself be got to wait upon three?
LADY MARY (with languid interest). I suppose there are such persons, Crichton?
CRICHTON (guardedly). I have heard, my lady, that there are such.
LADY MARY (a little desperate). Crichton, what’s to be done? We sail in two days; could one be discovered in the time?
AGATHA (frankly a supplicant). Surely you can think of some one?
CRICHTON (after hesitating). There is in this establishment, your ladyship, a young woman--
LADY MARY. Yes?
CRICHTON. A young woman, on whom I have for some time cast an eye.
CATHERINE (eagerly). Do you mean as a possible lady’s-maid?
CRICHTON. I had thought of her, my lady, in another connection.
LADY MARY. Ah!
CRICHTON. But I believe she is quite the young person you require. Perhaps if you could see her, my lady--
LADY MARY. I shall certainly see her. Bring her to me. (He goes.) You two needn’t wait.
CATHERINE. Needn’t we? We see your little game, Mary.
AGATHA. We shall certainly remain and have our two-thirds of her.
(They sit there doggedly until CRICHTON returns with TWEENY, who looks scared.)
CRICHTON. This, my lady, is the young person.
CATHERINE (frankly). Oh dear!
(It is evident that all three consider her quite unsuitable.)
LADY MARY. Come here, girl. Don’t be afraid.
(TWEENY looks imploringly at her idol.)
CRICHTON. Her appearance, my lady, is homely, and her manners, as you may have observed, deplorable, but she has a heart of gold.
LADY MARY. What is your position downstairs?
TWEENY (bobbing). I’m a tweeny, your ladyship.
CATHERINE. A what?
CRICHTON. A tweeny; that is to say, my lady, she is not at present, strictly speaking, anything; a between maid; she helps the vegetable maid. It is she, my lady, who conveys the dishes from the one end of the kitchen table, where they are placed by the cook, to the other end, where they enter into the charge of Thomas and John.
LADY MARY. I see. And you and Crichton are--ah--keeping company?
(CRICHTON draws himself up.)
TWEENY (aghast). A butler don’t keep company, my lady.
LADY MARY (indifferently). Does he not?
CRICHTON. No, your ladyship, we butlers may--(he makes a gesture with his arms)--but we do not keep company.
AGATHA. I know what it is; you are engaged?
(TWEENY looks longingly at CRICHTON.)
CRICHTON. Certainly not, my lady. The utmost I can say at present is that I have cast a favourable eye.
(Even this is much to TWEENY.)
LADY MARY. As you choose. But I am afraid, Crichton, she will not suit us.
CRICHTON. My lady, beneath this simple exterior are concealed a very sweet nature and rare womanly gifts.
AGATHA. Unfortunately, that is not what we want.
CRICHTON. And it is she, my lady, who dresses the hair of the ladies’-maids for our evening meals.
(The ladies are interested at last.)
LADY MARY. She dresses Fisher’s hair?
TWEENY. Yes, my lady, and I does them up when they goes to parties.
CRICHTON (pained, but not scolding). Does!
TWEENY. Doos. And it’s me what alters your gowns to fit them.
CRICHTON. What alters!
TWEENY. Which alters.
AGATHA. Mary?
LADY MARY. I shall certainly have her.
CATHERINE. We shall certainly have her. Tweeny, we have decided to make a lady’s-maid of you.
TWEENY. Oh lawks!
AGATHA. We are doing this for you so that your position socially may be more nearly akin to that of Crichton.
CRICHTON (gravely). It will undoubtedly increase the young person’s chances.
LADY MARY. Then if I get a good character for you from Mrs. Perkins, she will make the necessary arrangements.
(She resumes reading.)
TWEENY (elated). My lady!
LADY MARY. By the way, I hope you are a good sailor.
TWEENY (startled). You don’t mean, my lady, I’m to go on the ship?
LADY MARY. Certainly.
TWEENY. But--(To CRICHTON.) You ain’t going, sir?
CRICHTON. No.
TWEENY (firm at last). Then neither ain’t I.
AGATHA. YOU must.
TWEENY. Leave him! Not me.
LADY MARY. Girl, don’t be silly. Crichton will be--considered in your wages.
TWEENY. I ain’t going.
CRICHTON. I feared this, my lady.
TWEENY. Nothing’ll budge me.
LADY MARY. Leave the room.
(CRICHTON shows TWEENY out with marked politeness.)
AGATHA. Crichton, I think you might have shown more displeasure with her.
CRICHTON (contrite). I was touched, my lady. I see, my lady, that to part from her would be a wrench to me, though I could not well say so in her presence, not having yet decided how far I shall go with her.
(He is about to go when LORD LOAM returns, fuming.)
LORD LOAM. The ingrate! The smug! The fop!
CATHERINE. What is it now, father?
LORD LOAM. That man of mine, Rolleston, refuses to accompany us because you are to have but one maid.
AGATHA. Hurrah!
LADY MARY (in better taste). Darling father, rather than you should lose Rolleston, we will consent to take all the three of them.
LORD LOAM. Pooh, nonsense! Crichton, find me a valet who can do without three maids.
CRICHTON. Yes, my lord. (Troubled.) In the time--the more suitable the party, my lord, the less willing will he be to come without the--the usual perquisites.
LORD LOAM. Any one will do.
CRICHTON (shocked). My lord!
LORD LOAM. The ingrate! The puppy!
(AGATHA has an idea, and whispers to LADY MARY.)
LADY MARY. I ask a favour of a servant?--never!
AGATHA. Then I will. Crichton, would it not be very distressing to you to let his lordship go, attended by a valet who might prove unworthy? It is only for three months; don’t you think that you--you yourself--you--
(As CRICHTON sees what she wants he pulls himself up with noble, offended dignity, and she is appalled.)
I beg your pardon.
(He bows stiffly.)
CATHERINE (to CRICHTON). But think of the joy to Tweeny.
(CRICHTON is moved, but he shakes his head.)
LADY MARY (so much the cleverest). Crichton, do you think it safe to let the master you love go so far away without you while he has these dangerous views about equality?
(CRICHTON is profoundly stirred. After a struggle he goes to his master, who has been pacing the room.)
CRICHTON. My lord, I have found a man.
LORD LOAM. Already? Who is he?
(CRICHTON presents himself with a gesture.)
Yourself?
CATHERINE. Father, how good of him.
LORD LOAM (pleased, but thinking it a small thing). Uncommon good. Thank you, Crichton. This helps me nicely out of a hole; and how it will annoy Rolleston! Come with me, and we shall tell him. Not that I think you have lowered yourself in any way. Come along.
(He goes, and CRICHTON is to follow him, but is stopped by AGATHA impulsively offering him her hand.)
CRICHTON (who is much shaken). My lady--a valet’s hand!
AGATHA. I had no idea you would feel it so deeply; why did you do it?
(CRICHTON is too respectful to reply.)
LADY MARY (regarding him). Crichton, I am curious. I insist upon an answer.
CRICHTON. My lady, I am the son of a butler and a lady’s-maid--perhaps the happiest of all combinations, and to me the most beautiful thing in the world is a haughty, aristocratic English house, with every one kept in his place. Though I were equal to your ladyship, where would be the pleasure to me? It would be counterbalanced by the pain of feeling that Thomas and John were equal to me.
CATHERINE. But father says if we were to return to nature--
CRICHTON. If we did, my lady, the first thing we should do would be to elect a head. Circumstances might alter cases; the same person might not be master; the same persons might not be servants. I can’t say as to that, nor should we have the deciding of it. Nature would decide for us.
LADY MARY. You seem to have thought it all out carefully, Crichton.
CRICHTON. Yes, my lady.
CATHERINE. And you have done this for us, Crichton, because you thought that--that father needed to be kept in his place?
CRICHTON. I should prefer you to say, my lady, that I have done it for the house.
AGATHA. Thank you, Crichton. Mary, be nicer to him. (But LADY MARY has begun to read again.) If there was any way in which we could show our gratitude.
CRICHTON. If I might venture, my lady, would you kindly show it by becoming more like Lady Mary. That disdain is what we like from our superiors. Even so do we, the upper servants, disdain the lower servants, while they take it out of the odds and ends.
(He goes, and they bury themselves in cushions.)
AGATHA. Oh dear, what a tiring day.
CATHERINE. I feel dead. Tuck in your feet, you selfish thing.
(LADY MARY is lying reading on another couch.)
LADY MARY. I wonder what he meant by circumstances might alter cases.
AGATHA (yawning). Don’t talk, Mary, I was nearly asleep.
LADY MARY. I wonder what he meant by the same person might not be master, and the same persons might not be servants.
CATHERINE. Do be quiet, Mary, and leave it to nature; he said nature would decide.
LADY MARY. I wonder--
(But she does not wonder very much. She would wonder more if she knew what was coming. Her book slips unregarded to the floor. The ladies are at rest until it is time to dress.)
End of Act I.
## ACT II. THE ISLAND
Two months have elapsed, and the scene is a desert island in the Pacific, on which our adventurers have been wrecked.
The curtain rises on a sea of bamboo, which shuts out all view save the foliage of palm trees and some gaunt rocks. Occasionally Crichton and Treherne come momentarily into sight, hacking and hewing the bamboo, through which they are making a clearing between the ladies and the shore; and by and by, owing to their efforts, we shall have an unrestricted outlook on to a sullen sea that is at present hidden. Then we shall also be able to note a mast standing out of the water--all that is left, saving floating wreckage, of the ill-fated yacht the Bluebell. The beginnings of a hut will also be seen, with Crichton driving its walls into the ground or astride its roof of saplings, for at present he is doing more than one thing at a time. In a red shirt, with the ends of his sailor’s breeches thrust into wading-boots, he looks a man for the moment; we suddenly remember some one’s saying--perhaps it was ourselves--that a cataclysm would be needed to get him out of his servant’s clothes, and apparently it has been forthcoming. It is no longer beneath our dignity to cast an inquiring eye on his appearance. His features are not distinguished, but he has a strong jaw and green eyes, in which a yellow light burns that we have not seen before. His dark hair, hitherto so decorously sleek, has been ruffled this way and that by wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and wanted to help his chance. His muscles must be soft and flabby still, but though they shriek aloud to him to desist, he rains lusty blows with his axe, like one who has come upon the open for the first time in his life, and likes it. He is as yet far from being an expert woodsman--mark the blood on his hands at places where he has hit them instead of the tree; but note also that he does not waste time in bandaging them--he rubs them in the earth and goes on. His face is still of the discreet pallor that befits a butler, and he carries the smaller logs as if they were a salver; not in a day or a month will he shake off the badge of servitude, but without knowing it he has begun.
But for the hatchets at work, and an occasional something horrible falling from a tree into the ladies’ laps, they hear nothing save the mournful surf breaking on a coral shore.
They sit or recline huddled together against a rock, and they are farther from home, in every sense of the word, than ever before. Thirty-six hours ago, they were given three minutes in which to dress, without a maid, and reach the boats, and they have not made the best of that valuable time. None of them has boots, and had they known this prickly island they would have thought first of boots. They have a sufficiency of garments, but some of them were gifts dropped into the boat--Lady Mary’s tarpaulin coat and hat, for instance, and Catherine’s blue jersey and red cap, which certify that the two ladies were lately before the mast. Agatha is too gay in Ernest’s dressing-gown, and clutches it to her person with both hands as if afraid that it may be claimed by its rightful owner. There are two pairs of bath slippers between the three of them, and their hair cries aloud and in vain for hairpins.
By their side, on an inverted bucket, sits Ernest, clothed neatly in the garments of day and night, but, alas, bare-footed. He is the only cheerful member of this company of four, but his brightness is due less to a manly desire to succour the helpless than to his having been lately in the throes of composition, and to his modest satisfaction with the result. He reads to the ladies, and they listen, each with one scared eye to the things that fall from trees.