Dear Brutus (dramatic reading) — Act 3
ACT III
Lob's room has gone very dark as it sits up awaiting the possible return of the adventurers.
The curtains are drawn, so that no light comes from outside.
There is a tapping on the window, and anon two intruders are stealing about the floor, with muffled cries when they meet unexpectedly.
They find the switch and are revealed as Purdie and his Mabel.
Something has happened to them as they emerged from the wood, but it is so superficial that neither notices it: they are again in the evening dress in which they had left the house.
But they are still being led by that strange humour of the blood.
MABEL (looking around her curiously).
A pretty little room; I wonder who is the owner?
PURDIE.
It doesn't matter; the great thing is that we have escaped Joanna.
MABEL.
Jack, look, a man!
(The term may not be happily chosen, but the person indicated is Lob curled up on his chair by a dead fire.
The last look on his face before he fell asleep having been a leery one it is still there.
) PURDIE.
He is asleep.
MABEL.
Do you know him?
PURDIE.
Not I. Excuse me, sir, Hi!
(No shaking, however, wakens the sleeper.
) MABEL.
Darling, how extraordinary.
PURDIE (always considerate).
After all, precious, have we any right to wake up a stranger, just to tell him that we are runaways hiding in his house?
MABEL (who comes of a good family).
I think he would expect it of us.
PURDIE (after trying again).
There is no budging him.
MABEL (appeased).
At any rate, we have done the civil thing.
(She has now time to regard the room more attentively, including the tray of coffee cups which MATEY had left on the table in a not unimportant moment of his history.
) There have evidently been people here, but they haven't drunk their coffee.
Ugh!
cold as a deserted egg in a bird's nest.
Jack, if you were a clever detective you could construct those people out of their neglected coffee cups.
I wonder who they are and what has spirited them away?
PURDIE.
Perhaps they have only gone to bed.
Ought we to knock them up?
MABEL (after considering what her mother would have done).
I think not, dear.
I suppose we have run away, Jack--meaning to?
PURDIE (with the sturdiness that weaker vessels adore).
Irrevocably.
Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ...
(He becomes conscious that something has happened to LOB'S leer.
It has not left his face but it has shifted.
) He is not shamming, do you think?
MABEL.
Shake him again.
PURDIE (after shaking him).
It's all right.
Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ...
MABEL.
Poor little Joanna!
Still, if a woman insists on being a pendulum round a man's neck ...
PURDIE.
Do give me a chance, Mabel.
If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ...
(JOANNA comes through the curtains so inopportunely that for the moment he is almost pettish.
) May I say, this is just a little too much, Joanna!
JOANNA (unconscious as they of her return to her dinner gown).
So, sweet husband, your soul is still walking alone, is it?
MABEL (who hates coarseness of any kind).
How can you sneak about in this way, Joanna?
Have you no pride?
JOANNA (dashing away a tear).
Please to address me as Mrs. Purdie, madam.
(She sees LOB.
) Who is this man?
PURDIE.
We don't know; and there is no waking him.
You can try, if you like.
(Failing to rouse him JOANNA makes a third at table.
They are all a little inconsequential, as if there were still some moon-shine in their hair.
) JOANNA.
You were saying something about the devotion of a lifetime;
please go on.
PURDIE (diffidently).
I don't like to before you, Joanna.
JOANNA (becoming coarse again).
Oh, don't mind me.
PURDIE (looking like a note of interrogation).
I should certainly like to say it.
MABEL (loftily).
And I shall be proud to hear it.
PURDIE.
I should have liked to spare you this, Joanna; you wouldn't put your hands over your ears?
JOANNA (alas).
No, sir.
MABEL.
Fie, Joanna.
Surely a wife's natural delicacy ...
PURDIE (severely).
As you take it in that spirit, Joanna, I can proceed with a clear conscience.
If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime--(He reels a little, staring at LOB, over whose face the leer has been wandering like an insect.
) MABEL.
Did he move?
PURDIE.
It isn't that.
I am feeling--very funny.
Did one of you tap me just now on the forehead?
(Their hands also have gone to their foreheads.
) MABEL.
I think I have been in this room before.
PURDIE (flinching).
There is something coming rushing back to me.
MABEL.
I seem to know that coffee set.
If I do, the lid of the milk jug is chipped.
It is!
JOANNA.
I can't remember this man's name; but I am sure it begins with L. MABEL.
Lob.
PURDIE.
Lob.
JOANNA.
Lob.
PURDIE.
Mabel, your dress?
MABEL (beholding it).
How on earth...?
JOANNA.
My dress!
(To PURDIE.
) You were in knickerbockers in the wood.
PURDIE.
And so I am now.
(He sees he is not.
) Where did I change?
The wood!
Let me think.
The wood ...
the wood, certainly.
But the wood wasn't the wood.
JOANNA (revolving like one in pursuit).
My head is going round.
MABEL.
Lob's wood!
I remember it all.
We were here.
We did go.
PURDIE.
So we did.
But how could...?
where was...?
JOANNE.
And who was...?
MABEL And what was...?
PURDIE (even in this supreme hour a man).
Don't let go.
Hold on to what we were doing, or we shall lose grip of ourselves.
Devotion.
Something about devotion.
Hold on to devotion.
'If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime...'
Which of you was I saying that to?
MABEL.
To me.
PURDIE.
Are you sure?
MABEL (shakily).
I am not quite sure.
PURDIE (anxiously).
Joanna, what do you think?
(With a sudden increase of uneasiness.
) Which of you is my wife?
JOANNA (without enthusiasm).
I am.
No, I am not.
It is Mabel who is your wife!
MABEL.
Me?
PURDIE (with a curious gulp).
Why, of course you are, Mabel!
MABEL.
I believe I am!
PURDIE.
And yet how can it be?
I was running away with you.
JOANNA (solving that problem).
You don't need to do it now.
PURDIE.
The wood.
Hold on to the wood.
The wood is what explains it.
Yes, I see the whole thing.
(He gazes at LOB.
) You infernal old rascal!
Let us try to think it out.
Don't any one speak for a moment.
Think first.
Love ...
Hold on to love.
(He gets another tap.
) I
say, I believe I am not a deeply passionate chap at all; I believe I am just ....
a philanderer!
MABEL.
It is what you are.
JOANNA (more magnanimous).
Mabel, what about ourselves?
PURDIE (to whom it is truly a nauseous draught).
I didn't know.
Just a philanderer!
(The soul of him would like at this instant to creep into another body.
) And if people don't change, I suppose we shall begin all over again now.
JOANNA (the practical).
I daresay; but not with each other.
I may philander again, but not with you.
(They look on themselves without approval, always a sorry occupation.
The man feels it most because he has admired himself most, or perhaps partly for some better reason.
) PURDIE (saying good-bye to an old friend).
John Purdie, John Purdie, the fine fellow I used to think you!
(When he is able to look them in the face again.
) The wood has taught me one thing, at any rate.
MABEL (dismally).
What, Jack?
PURDIE.
That it isn't accident that shapes our lives.
JOANNA.
No, it's Fate.
PURDIE (the truth running through him, seeking for a permanent home in him, willing to give him still another chance, loth to desert him).
It's not Fate, Joanna.
Fate is something outside us.
What really plays the dickens with us is some thing in ourselves.
Something that makes us go on doing the same sort of fool things, however many chances we get.
MABEL.
Something in ourselves?
PURDIE (shivering).
Something we are born with.
JOANNA.
Can't we cut out the beastly thing?
PURDIE.
Depends, I expect, on how long we have pampered him.
We can at least control him if we try hard enough.
But I have for the moment an abominably clear perception that the likes of me never really tries.
Forgive me, Joanna--no, Mabel--both of you.
(He is a shamed man.
) It isn't very pleasant to discover that one is a rotter.
I
suppose I shall get used to it.
JOANNA.
I could forgive anybody anything to-night.
(Candidly.
) It is so lovely not to be married to you, Jack.
PURDIE (spiritless).
I can understand that.
I do feel small.
JOANNA (the true friend).
You will soon swell up again.
PURDIE (for whom, alas, we need not weep).
That is the appalling thing.
But at present, at any rate, I am a rag at your feet, Joanna--no, at yours, Mabel.
Are you going to pick me up?
I don't advise it.
MABEL.
I don't know whether I want to, Jack.
To begin with, which of us is it your lonely soul is in search of?
JOANNA.
Which of us is the fluid one, or the fluider one?
MABEL.
Are you and I one?
Or are you and Joanna one?
Or are the three of us two?
JOANNA.
He wants you to whisper in his ear, Mabel, the entrancing poem, 'Mabel Purdie.'
Do it, Jack; there will be nothing wrong in it now.
PURDIE.
Rub it in.
MABEL.
When I meet Joanna's successor-- PURDIE (quailing).
No, no, Mabel none of that.
At least credit me with having my eyes open at last.
There will be no more of this.
I swear it by all that is-- JOANNA (in her excellent imitation of a sheep).
Baa-a, he is off again.
PURDIE.
Oh Lord, so I am.
MABEL.
Don't, Joanna.
PURDIE (his mind still illumined).
She is quite right--I was.
In my present state of depression--which won't last--I feel there is something in me that will make me go on being the same ass, however many chances I get.
I haven't the stuff in me to take warning.
My whole being is corroded.
Shakespeare knew what he was talking about--'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.'
JOANNA.
For 'dear Brutus' we are to read 'dear audience' I suppose?
PURDIE.
You have it.
JOANNA.
Meaning that we have the power to shape ourselves?
PURDIE.
We have the power right enough.
JOANNA.
But isn't that rather splendid?
PURDIE.
