Dunstan. I don’t understand you. You—will—not—relent? You cannot forget what I am!
Leslie. No. But the burden of the sin you have committed I will bear upon my shoulders, and the little good that is in me shall enter into your heart. We will start life anew, always seeking for the best that we can do, always trying to repair the worst that we have done. (Stretching out her hand to him.) Dunstan! (He approaches her as in a dream.) Don’t fear me! I will be your wife, not your judge. Let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of.
Dunstan. (He tremblingly touches her hand as she bursts into tears.) Wife! Ah, God bless you! God bless you, and forgive me!
(He kneels at her side, and she bows her head down to his.)
Leslie. Oh, my husband!
THE ENDING AS PRINTED
Dunstan. Fool! Fool! Why couldn’t you have died in Florence? Why did you drag yourself here all these miles—to end it here? I should have known better—I should have known better. (He takes a phial from his pocket and slowly pours some poison into a tumbler.) When I’ve proved that I could not live away from her, perhaps she’ll pity me. I shall never know it, but perhaps she’ll pity me then. (About to drink.) Supposing I am blind! Supposing there is some chance of my regaining her. Regaining her! How dull sleeplessness makes me! How much could I regain of what I’ve lost! Why, she knows me—nothing can ever undo that—she knows me. Every day would be a dreary, hideous masquerade; every night a wakeful, torturing retrospect. If she smiled, I should whisper to myself—“yes, yes, that’s a very pretty pretence, but—she knows you!” The slamming of a door would shout it, the creaking of a stair would murmur it “she knows you!” And when she thought herself alone, or while she lay in her sleep, I should be always stealthily spying for that dreadful look upon her face, and I should find it again and again as I see it now—the look which cries out so plainly “Profligate! you taught one good woman to believe in you, but now she knows you!” No, no—no, no! (He drains the contents of the tumbler.) The end—the end. (Pointing towards the clock.) The hour at which we used to walk together in the garden at Florence—husband and wife—lovers. (He pulls up the window-blind and looks out.) The sky—the last time—the sky. (He rests drowsily against the piano.) Tired—tired. (He walks rather unsteadily to the table.) A line to Murray. (Writing.) A line to Murray—telling him—poison—morphine—message—(The pen falls from his hand and his head drops forward.) The light is going out. I can’t see. Light—I’ll finish this when I wake—I’ll rest. (He staggers to the sofa and falls upon it.) I shall sleep tonight. The voice has gone. Leslie—wife—reconciled—
(Leslie enters softly and kneels by his side.)
Leslie. Dunstan, I am here. (He partly opens his eyes, raises himself, and stares at her; then his head falls back quietly. Leslie’s face averted.) Dunstan, I have returned to you. We are one and we will make atonement for the past together. I will be your Wife, not your Judge—let us from this moment begin the new life you spoke of. Dunstan! (She sees the paper which has fallen from his hand, and reads it.) Dunstan! Dunstan! No, no! Look at me! Ah! (She catches him in her arms.) Husband! Husband! Husband![22]
It is of course true, as M. Brieux maintains in regard to the two endings of his early play, Blanchette,[23] that sometimes more than one ending may be made plausible. Consequently he changed a tragic close to something more pleasing to his audience. Belief grows, however, that when a play has been begun and developed with a tragic ending in mind, this cannot with entire convincingness be changed to something else unless the play is rewritten from the start. There is inevitableness in the conduct on the stage of the creatures of our brains even as with people of real life. So strongly does Sir Arthur Pinero feel this as the result of his long experience that, though he changed the ending of The Big Drum in 1915 in accordance with public demand, he restored the original version when printing the play. He says in his Preface: