A kiss for Cinderella: A comedy

by J. M. Barrie

(All stop dancing.)

(Hoarsely.) There’s an ice-cream for everybody.

(Amid applause the royal ice-cream barrow is wheeled on by haughty menials who fill the paper sieves with dabs of the luscious condiment. The paper sieves are of gold, but there are no spoons. The children, drunk with expectation, forget their manners and sit on the throne. Somehow CINDERELLA’S penny clients drift in again, each carrying a sieve.)

None touches till one royal lick has been taken by us four.... (He gives them a toast.) To the Bridal Pair!

(At the royal word ‘Go!’ ALL attack the ices with their tongues, greedily but gracefully. They end in the approved manner by gobbling up the sieves. It is especially charming to see the last of LORD TIME’S sieve unbend. The music becomes irresistible. If you did not dance you would be abandoned by your legs. It is as if a golden coin had been dropped into a golden slot. Ranks are levelled. The KING asks GLADYS for this one; the QUEEN is whisked away by MR. BODIE. Perhaps they dance like costers: if you had time to reflect you might think it a scene in the streets. It becomes too merry to last; couples are whirled through the walls as if the floor itself were rotating: soon CINDERELLA and her PRINCE dance alone. It is then that the clock begins to strike twelve. CINDERELLA should fly now, or woe befall her. Alas, she hears nothing save the whispers of her lover. The hour has struck, and her glorious gown shrinks slowly into the tattered frock of a girl with a broom. Too late she huddles on the floor to conceal the change. In another moment the PRINCE must see. The children gather round her with little cries, and, spreading out their nightgowns to conceal her, rush her from the scene. It is then that the PRINCE discovers his loss. In a frenzy he calls her sweet name. The bewildered girl has even forgotten to drop the slipper, without which he shall never find her. MARIE-THERESE, the ever-vigilant, steals back with it, and leaves it on the floor.

The ball-room is growing dark. The lamps have gone out. There is no light save the tiniest glow, which has been showing on the floor all the time, unregarded by us. It seems to come from a policeman’s lantern. The gold is all washed out by the odd streaks of white that come down like rain. Soon the PRINCE’S cry of ‘CINDERELLA, CINDERELLA’ dies away. It is no longer a ball-room on which the lantern sheds this feeble ray. It is the street outside CINDERELLA’S door, a white street now, silent in snow. The child in her rags, the policeman’s scarf still round her precious feet, is asleep on the door step, very little life left in her, very little oil left in the lantern.)

III

The retreat in which Cinderella is to be found two months later has been described to us by our policeman with becoming awe. It seems to be a very pleasant house near the sea, and possibly in pre-war days people were at ease in it. None of that, says the policeman emphatically, with DR. BODIE in charge. He could wink discreetly at DR. BODIE in absence, but was prepared to say on oath that no one ever winked at her when she was present. In the old days he had been more than a passive observer of the suffragette in action, had even been bitten by them in the way of business; had not then gone into the question of their suitability for the vote, but liked the pluck of them; had no objection to his feelings on the woman movement being summed up in this way, that he had vaguely disapproved of their object, but had admired their methods. After knowing DR. BODIE he must admit that his views about their object had undergone a change; was now a whole-hearted supporter, felt in his bones that DR. BODIE was born to command: astonishing thing about her that she did it so natural-like. She was not in the least mannish or bullying; she was a very ladylike sort of person, a bit careful about the doing of her hair, and the set of her hat, and she had a soft voice, though what you might call an arbitrary manner. Very noticeable the way she fixed you with her steely eye. In appearance she was very like her room at the retreat, or the room was very like her; everything in cruel good order, as you might say; an extraordinarily decorous writing table near the centre, the sort of table against which you instinctively stood and waited to make your deposition; the friendliest thing in the room (to a policeman) was the book-cases with wire doors, because the books looked through the wires at you in a homely way like prisoners. It was a sunny room at times, but this did not take away from its likeness to the doctor, who could also smile on occasion.

Into this room MR. BODIE is shown on a summer afternoon by a maid with no nonsense about her in working hours.