Three Plays

by A. A. Milne

Dominic	Allan Aynesworth.
Mr. Latimer	Henry Ainley.
Leonard	Nicholas Hannen.
Anne	Nancy Atkin.
Eustasia	Athene Seyler.
Nicholas	John Deverell.

THE DOVER ROAD[95]

ACT I

What MR. LATIMER prefers to call the reception-room of his house is really the hall. You come straight into it through the heavy oak front door. But this door is so well built, so well protected by a thick purple curtain, and the room so well warmed by central heating, that none of the usual disadvantages of a hall on a November night attaches to it. Just now, of course, all the curtains are drawn, so that the whole of this side of the hall is purple-hung. In the middle of the room, a little to the right, is a mahogany table, clothless, laid for three. A beautiful blue bowl, filled with purple anemones, helps, with the silver and the old cut glass, to decorate it. Over the whole room there is something of an Arabian-night-adventure air. In the daytime, perhaps, it is an ordinary hall, furnished a trifle freakishly, but in the night time one wonders what is going to happen next.

DOMINIC, tall, stout, and grave, the major-domo of the house, in a butler’s old-fashioned evening-dress, comes in. He stands looking at the room to see that all is as it should be, then walks to the table and gives a little touch to it here and there. He turns round and waits a moment. The Staff materialises suddenly—[96]two footmen and two chambermaids. The men come from the left, the women from the right; over their clothes, too, MR. LATIMER has been a little freakish. They stand in a line.

DOMINIC. The blue room in the east wing is ready?

THE MEN. Yes, Mr. Dominic.

DOMINIC. The white room in the west wing is ready?

THE WOMEN. Yes, Mr. Dominic.

DOMINIC. The procedure will be as before.