THE MOON.
[Impossible Play Series.]
A Super-psychological Drama in One Act.
Persons of the Play.
| Lord Gumthorpe. Lady Gastwyck. | Angela Thynne. Stud, a butler. |
[Author to Printer.—Oblige me by reversing your usual practice, and printing the text in italics and the stage directions in roman type. My request will, I hope, prove intelligible.]
Scene.—The drawing-room at Lady Gastwyck's. A large, low room with a mullioned window at the back through which moonlight steals. The decoration of the room is Adams', though of rather a self-conscious type, as the plan and construction of the house is obviously of an earlier period. The furniture is Chinese Chippendale.
Lord Gumthorpe is leaning against the window; Angela Thynne is leaning against the Chesterfield, and Lady Gastwyck is leaning against the Adams' fireplace. Lord Gumthorpe is a tall, gaunt man, slightly resembling the portrait of Philip IV. of Spain, by Velasquez. He turns towards Lady Gastwyck and waves his long arms with a gesture of indecision. He then turns back and looks out on to the lawn. Angela Thynne, is a large, ill-proportioned woman, with curiously limpid blue eyes, and a shrill hard voice like a fog-siren, that does not seem to belong to her personality. One is always haunted with the idea that she might be Scotch. Lady Gastwyck rises. She is a short dark woman with deep-set eyes and one very remarkable characteristic. She has apparently only one eyebrow. She really has two, but they meet together in one dark straight line, and give her a forbidding aspect. She has a habit of walking with her chin thrust forward and her long arms curved like a boxer's. She advances upon Lord Gumthorpe. He instinctively puts up his hands as though expecting to be struck.
Lady Gastwyck. You think then that we—that is, that you and I——
[She waves her hand towards the moonlit lawn. It might be an action of dismissal, or an appeal to the elemental forces. Lord Gumthorpe drops limply on to the window-seat and presses his forehead against the stone mullion. Then he stands up and gazes at her face, trying not to appear to be looking at her one eyebrow.
Lord Gumthorpe (with tremulous indecision). Yes! but you see——
[As he stands there the extraordinary resemblance between him and Velasquez' portrait of Philip IV. of Spain comes home to her with such force that she is about to qualify her half-stated implication, when Angela Thynne drops her fan into the fireplace. She has moved to the seat that Lady Gastwyck had vacated. She is leaning forward with lips parted, and her limpid blue eyes gazing at the dead embers. Lady Gastwyck recoils as though struck by a whip. She moves to the Chesterfield and leans against it, biting her nails. Lord Gumthorpe moves deeper into the recess, struggling with the emotions which the astounding act of Angela has produced. As he sits there, the moonlight, pouring through the diamond panes of the window, throws rhomboids of light on to the polished floor. It looks like some enchanted chessboard. Leaning back and gazing with half-closed eyes, he peoples it with fantastic rooks, and knights and bishops, when suddenly the strangely penetrating voice of Angela breaks the silence.
Angela. Would it be possible for you two to——
[There is a terrifying silence.]
Lord Gumthorpe (greedily). Pawn to Queen's pawn four!
[He says this to gain time. For the besetting irresoluteness of the Gumthorpes is consuming him. "If only she would——" he is thinking to himself, rapidly reviewing the salient features of his past life. He has not the courage to look at Angela, but his eyes wander in the direction of Lady Gastwyck. She is leaning forward on the Chesterfield, her chin resting on her hand, her eyebrow looking like an enormous black moustache. He feels his way along the wall, keeping his face towards Lady Gastwyck. He knows—he was educated at Eton and Christchurch—that as the fan has fallen into the fireplace, unless it has been removed, it will be there still. Very slowly he reaches the grate and, without turning his head, picks up the fan. It is a moment of intense emotion. The air is charged with electric suspense. Lady Gastwyck moves suddenly, and the rustle of her skirt sounds like the rattle of musketry on a frosty morning. Lord Gumthorpe drops the fan. He gropes wildly in the fireplace but cannot find it again. Then with an air of helpless resignation he goes back to the window-seat. He gazes at the chequered pattern on the floor and mentally moves his king up one. Lady Gastwyck glances across at him, and it occurs to her that he has aged during the last few minutes. He no longer looks like Philip IV. of Spain, but more like the sub-manager of the White Goods Department of a suburban Bon-Marché. She is anxious that Angela shall not observe this, and hence makes the following appeal.
Lady Gastwyck (hysterically and á propos of no one). A maroon underskirt! a maroon underskirt! That would be the thing! Fancy, Angela, biscuit-coloured glacé with that coffee skin of hers and those teeth! You must save her! Take her to Raquin! Let Raquin cut it as only he knows how! Let her have—— Ah!
[She bursts into tears and then stops, seeing that her effort has failed, for a sombre silence ensues. Angela has risen and is looking at Lord Gumthorpe. Lord Gumthorpe is standing with his arms folded. He has just lost a bishop in the dim chiaroscuro of the window-seat and has not heard her outbreak. Suddenly he looks up, and fixes his eyes upon Lady Gastwyck with a new sense of resolution. He advances towards her, and gazing boldly at her eyebrow, that looks more than ever like a moustache, calls out in a thin cruel voice.
Lord Gumthorpe. Why don't you wax the ends?
[The effect of this bizarre question is startling. Angela turns and smiles gently like one who has done one's best at a deathbed, and is almost relieved that the end has come. She walks almost serenely across the room to the sideboard, and, taking up a piece of cheese and three bananas, goes off to bed. But the effect on Lady Gastwyck is different, for directly she hears Lord Gumthorpe make this remark she realizes that he is a weak man.
There is a pond at the end of the lawn covered with green sedge. She shivers. She has courage, but not that sort of courage. She rises and leans against the Adams' fireplace. The Adams' fireplace leans against her. It falls on to her with a tremendous crash.... Lord Gumthorpe comes forward and gazes at the jumbled débris. He is conscious of a sense of despairing conflict—the conflict between contemplative amazement and some natural but well-controlled demand for concrete action. An appalling conviction comes to him that he ought to do something. Under the fallen mess of brick, marble, and wood there are feeble undulations. A phrase keeps running through his mind—"Expressing her primitive virility." He tries to think where he has read it, and what it means, and how it could apply to the present case. The undulations cease. He decides that the phrase could not apply to it. He returns to the window-seat. A new horror obsesses him. The moon has moved round. The chessboard has been blotted out. In extremis, Lord Gumthorpe falls back on his primitive instincts and rings for the butler. There is an imperceptible pause. Stud glides in and stands in the middle of the room, tears of reverence and respectability streaming down his cheeks.
Lord Gumthorpe. (after an interminable pause). Your mistress has dropped her fan into the fireplace!
[With a little croon of pleasure, Stud falls towards the fireplace. Suddenly he stops, beholding the-fallen wreckage. For a fraction of a second the fetters of a generation of servile habits are almost broken. A fugitive expression of surprise passes over his face. Then, remembering himself, he stumbles over the débris and, groping among the cinders, picks up the fan.
Stud (with finesse). Here is the fan, my Lord. Shall I present it to her Ladyship?
Lord Gumthorpe. (with extraordinary subtlety). No, you may keep it. Her Ladyship does not require it.
[Stud goes out with the fan. Lord Gumthorpe stands irresolutely warming his hands at the fire. Angela's father from Atlantis, Tennessee, is heard outside in the hall eating cantaloup. The pips rattle against the door. Unable to withstand this further symbol of inevitable doom, Lord Gumthorpe throws himself on to the fire. He is burnt up. The fire is blotted out. Everything is blotted out.