Alice Sit By The Fire
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J. M. Barrie >> Alice Sit By The Fire
Juliet Sutherland, Phil McLaury, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
THE PLAYS OF J. M. BARRIE
ALICE SIT-BY-THE-FIRE
I
One would like to peep covertly into Amy's diary (octavo, with the
word 'Amy' in gold letters wandering across the soft brown leather
covers, as if it was a long word and, in Amy's opinion, rather a
dear). To take such a liberty, and allow the reader to look over our
shoulders, as they often invite you to do in novels (which, however,
are much more coquettish things than plays) would be very helpful to
us; we should learn at once what sort of girl Amy is, and why to-day
finds her washing her hair. We should also get proof or otherwise,
that we are interpreting her aright; for it is our desire not to
record our feelings about Amy, but merely Amy's feelings about
herself; not to tell what we think happened, but what Amy thought
happened. The book, to be sure, is padlocked, but we happen to know
where it is kept. (In the lower drawer of that hand-painted
escritoire.) Sometimes in the night Amy, waking up, wonders whether
she did lock her diary, and steals downstairs in white to make sure.
On these occasions she undoubtedly lingers among the pages, re-reading
the peculiarly delightful bit she wrote yesterday; so we could peep
over her shoulder, while the reader peeps over ours. Then why don't we
do it? Is it because this would be a form of eavesdropping, and that
we cannot be sure our hands are clean enough to turn the pages of a
young girl's thoughts? It cannot be that, because the novelists do it.
It is because in a play we must tell nothing that is not revealed by
the spoken words; you must find out all you want to know from them;
there is no weather even in plays nowadays except in melodrama; the
novelist can have sixteen chapters about the hero's grandparents, but
we cannot even say he had any unless he says it himself. There can be
no rummaging in the past for us to show what sort of people our
characters are; we are allowed only to present them as they toe the
mark; then the handkerchief falls, and off they go.
So now we know why we must not spy into Amy's diary. Perhaps we have
not always been such sticklers for the etiquette of the thing; but we
are always sticklers on Thursdays, and this is a Thursday.
As you are to be shown Amy's room, we are permitted to describe it,
though not to tell (which would be much more interesting) why a girl
of seventeen has, as her very own, the chief room of a house. The
moment you open the door of this room (and please, you are not to look
consciously at the escritoire as if you knew the diary was in it) you
are aware, though Amy may not be visible, that there is an uncommonly
clever girl in the house. The door does not always open easily,
because attached thereto is a curtain which frequently catches in it,
and this curtain is hand-sewn (extinct animals); indeed a gifted
woman's touch is everywhere; if you are not hand-sewn you are almost
certainly hand-painted, but incompletely, for Amy in her pursuit of
the arts has often to drop one in order to keep pace with another.
Some of the chairs have escaped as yet, but their time will come. The
table-cover and the curtains are of a lovely pink, perforated
ingeniously with many tiny holes, which when you consider them against
a dark background, gradually assume the appearance of something
pictorial, such as a basket of odd flowers. The fender stool is in
brown velvet, and there are words on it that invite you to sit down.
Some of the letters of this message have been burned away. There are
artistic white bookshelves hanging lopsidedly here and there, and they
also have pink curtains, no larger than a doll's garments. These
little curtains are for covering the parts where there are no books as
yet. The pictures on the walls are mostly studies done at school, and
include the well-known windmill, and the equally popular old lady by
the shore. Their frames are of fir-cones, glued together, or of straws
which have gone limp, and droop like streaks of macaroni. There is a
cosy corner; also a milking-stool, but no cow. The lampshades have had
ribbons added to them, and from a distance look like ladies of the
ballet. The flower-pot also is in a skirt. Near the door is a large
screen, such as people hide behind in the more ordinary sort of play;
it will be interesting to see whether we can resist the temptation to
hide some one behind it.
A few common weeds rear their profane heads in this innocent garden;
for instance a cruet-stand, a basket of cutlery, and a triangular dish
of the kind in which the correct confine cheese. They have not strayed
here, they live here; indeed this is among other things the dining-
room of a modest little house in Brompton made beautiful, or nearly
so, by a girl, who has a soul above food and conceals its accessories
as far as possible from view, in drawers, even in the waste-paper
basket. Not a dish, not a spoon, not a fork, is hand-painted, a
sufficient indication of her contempt for them.
Amy is present, but is not seen to the best advantage, for she has been
washing her hair, and is now drying it by the fire. Notable among
her garments are a dressing-jacket and a towel, and her head is bent
so far back over the fire that we see her face nearly upside-down.
This is no position in which we can do justice to her undoubted facial
charm. Seated near her is her brother Cosmo, a boy of thirteen, in
naval uniform. Cosmo is a cadet at Osborne, and properly proud of his
station, but just now he looks proud of nothing. He is plunged in
gloom. The cause of his woe is a telegram, which he is regarding from
all points of the compass, as if in hopes of making it send him better
news. At last he gives expression to his feelings. 'All I can say,' he
sums up in the first words of the play, 'is that if father tries to
kiss me, I shall kick him.'
If Amy makes any reply the words arrive upside-down and are
unintelligible. The maid announces Miss Dunbar. Then Amy rises, brings
her head to the position in which they are usually carried; and she
and Ginevra look into each other's eyes. They always do this when they
meet, though they meet several times a day, and it is worth doing, for
what they see in those pellucid pools is love eternal. Thus they loved
at school (in their last two terms), and thus they will love till the
grave encloses them. These thoughts, and others even more beautiful,
are in their minds as they gaze at each other now. No man will ever be
able to say 'Amy,' or to say 'Ginevra,' with such a trill as they are
saying it.
'Ginevra, my beloved.'
'My Amy, my better self.'
'My other me.'
There is something almost painful in love like this.
'Are you well, Ginevra?'
'Quite well, Amy.'
Heavens, the joy of Amy because Ginevra is quite well.
'How did my Amy sleep?'
'I had a good night.'
How happy is Ginevra because Amy has had a good night. All this time
they have been slowly approaching each other, drawn by a power
stronger than themselves. Their intention is to kiss. They do so.
Cosmo snorts, and betakes himself to some other room, his bedroom
probably, where a man may be alone with mannish things, his razor, for
instance. The maidens do not resent his rudeness. They know that poor
Cosmo's time will come, and they are glad to be alone, for they have
much to say that is for no other mortal ears. Some of it is sure to go
into the diary; indeed if we were to put our ear to the drawer where
the diary is we could probably hear its little heart ticking in unison
with theirs.
It is Ginevra who speaks first. She is indeed the bolder of the two.
She grips Amy's hand and says quite firmly, 'Amy, shall we go to
_another_ to-night?' This does not puzzle Amy, she is prepared for it,
her honest grey eyes even tell that she has wanted it, but now that it
is come she quails a little. 'Another theatre?' she murmurs.
'Ginevra, that would be five in one week.'
Ginevra does not blanch. 'Yes,' she says recklessly, 'but it is also
only eight in seventeen years.'
'Isn't it,' says Amy, comforted. 'And they have taught us so much,
haven't they? Until Monday, dear, when we went to our first real play
we didn't know what Life is.'
'We were two raw, unbleached school-girls, Amy--absolutely
unbleached.'
It is such a phrase as this that gives Ginevra the moral ascendancy in
their discussions.
'Of course,' Amy ventures, looking perhaps a little unbleached even
now, 'of course I had my diary, dear, and I do think that, even before
Monday, there were things in it of a not wholly ordinary kind.'
'Nothing,' persists Ginevra cruelly, 'that necessitated your keeping
it locked.'
'No, I suppose not,' sadly enough. 'You are quite right, Ginevra. But
we have made up for lost time. Every night since Monday, including the
matinee, has been a revelation.'
She closes her eyes so that she may see the revelations more clearly.
So does Ginevra.
'Amy, that heart-gripping scene when the love-maddened woman visited
the _man_ in his _chambers_.'
'She wasn't absolutely love-maddened, Ginevra; she really loved her
husband best all the time.'
'Not till the last act, darling.'
'Please don't say it, Ginevra. She was most foolish, especially in the
crepe de chine, but _we_ know that she only went to the man's chambers
to get back her letters. How I trembled for her then.'
'I was strangely calm,' says Ginevra the stony hearted.
'Oh, Ginevra, I had such a presentiment that the husband would call at
those chambers while she was there. And he did. Ginevra, you remember
his knock upon the door. Surely you trembled then?'
Ginevra knits her lips triumphantly.
'Not even then, Amy. Somehow I felt sure that in the nick of time her
lady friend would step out from somewhere and say that the letters
were _hers_.'
'Nobly compromising herself, Ginevra.'
'Amy, how I love that bit where she says so unexpectedly, with noble
self-renunciation, "He is my affianced husband."'
'Isn't it glorious. Strange, Ginevra, that it happened in each play.'
'That was because we always went to the thinking theatres, Amy. Real
plays are always about a lady and two men; and alas, only one of them
is her husband. That is Life, you know. It is called the odd, odd
triangle.'
'Yes, I know.' Appealingly, 'Ginevra, I hope it wasn't wrong of me to
go. A month ago I was only a school-girl.'
'We both were.'
'Yes, but you are now an art student, in lodgings, with a latchkey
of your own; you have no one dependent on you, while I have a
brother and sister to--to form.'
'You must leave it to the Navy, dear, to form Cosmo, if it can; and as
the sister is only a baby, time enough to form her when she can exit
from her pram.'
'I am in a mother's place for the time being, Ginevra.'
'Even mothers go to thinking theatres.'
'Whether mine does, Ginevra, I don't even know. This is a very strange
position I am in, awaiting the return from India of parents I have not
seen since I was twelve years old. I don't even know if they will like
the house. The rent is what they told me to give, but perhaps my
scheme of decoration won't appeal to them; they may think my
housekeeping has been defective, and may not make allowance for my
being so new to it.'
Ginevra takes Amy in her arms. 'My ownest Amy, if they are not both on
their knees to you for the noble way in which you have striven to
prepare this house for them--'
'Darling Ginevra, all I ask is to be allowed to do my duty.'
'Listen, then, Amy: your duty is to be able to help your parents in
every way when they return. Your mother having been so long in India
can know little about Life; how sweet, then, for you to be able to
place your knowledge at her feet.'
'I had thought of that, dearest.'
'Then Amy, it would be simply wrong of us not to go to another theatre
to-night. I have three and ninepence, so that if you can scrape
together one and threepence--'
'Generous girl, it can't be.'
'Why not, Amy?'
The return of Cosmo handling the telegram more pugnaciously than ever
provides the answer.
'Cosmo, show Miss Dunbar the telegram.'
Miss Dunbar reads: 'Boat arrived Southampton this morning.'
'A day earlier than they expected,' Amy explains.
'It's the other bit I am worrying about,' Cosmo says darkly. The other
bit proves to be 'Hope to reach our pets this afternoon. Kisses from
both to all. Deliriously excited. Mummy and Dad.'
Now we see why Cosmo has been in distress.
'Pets, kisses,' he cries. 'What can the telegraph people think.'
'Surely,' Amy says, 'you want to kiss your mother.'
'I'm going to kiss her,' he replies stoutly. 'I mean to do it. It's
father I am worrying about; with his "kisses to _both_ from _all_." All
I can say is that, if father comes slobbering over me, I'll surprise
him.'
Here the outer door slams, and the three start to their feet as if
Philippi had dawned. To Cosmo the slam sounds uncommonly like a
father's kiss. He immediately begins to rehearse the greeting which is
meant to ward off the fatal blow. 'How are you, father? I'm glad to
see you, father; it's a long journey from India; won't you sit down?'
Amy is the first to recover. 'How silly of us,' she says; 'it is only
nurse with baby.'
Presumably what we hear is a perambulator backing into its stall in
the passage. Then nurse is distinctly heard in the adjoining room, and
we may gather that this is for the nonce the nursery of the house,
though to most occupants it would be the back dining-room. There is a
door between the two rooms, and Cosmo, peeping through a chink in it,
sounds to his fellow-conspirators the All's Well.
'Poor nurse,' Amy says with a kind sigh, 'I suppose I had better show
her the telegram. She is sure to cry. She looks upon mother as a thief
who has come to steal baby from her.'
Ginevra wags her head to indicate that this is another slice of Life;
and nurse being called in is confronted with the telegram. She runs a
gamut of emotion without words, implies that she is nobody and must
submit, nods humbly, sets her teeth, is both indignant and servile,
and finally bursts into tears. Amy tries to comfort her, but gets this
terrible answer: 'They'll be bringing a black woman to nurse her--a
yah-yah they call them.'
Amy signs to Ginevra, and Ginevra signs to Amy. These two souls
perfectly understand each other, and the telegraphy means that it will
be better for dear Ginevra to retire for a time to dear Amy's sweet
little bedroom. Amy slips the diary into the hand of Ginevra, who pops
upstairs with it to read the latest instalment. Nurse rambles on. 'I
have had her for seventeen months. She was just two months old, the
angel, when they sent her to England, and she has been mine ever
since. The most of them has one look for their mammas and one look for
their nurse, but she knew no better than to have both looks for me.'
She returns to the nursery, wailing 'My reign is over.'
'Do you think Molly _will_ chuck nurse for mother?' asks Cosmo, to whom
this is a new thought.
'It is the way of children,' the more experienced Amy tells him.
'Shabby little beasts,' the man says.
'You mustn't say that, Cosmo; but still it is hard on nurse. Of
course,' with swimming eyes, 'in a sense it's hard on all of us--I
mean to be expecting parents in these circumstances. There must be
almost the same feeling of strangeness in the house as when it is a
baby that is expected.'
'I suppose it is a bit like that,' Cosmo says gloomily. He goes to her
as the awfulness of this sinks into him: 'Great Scott, Amy, it can't
be quite so bad as that.'
Amy, who is of a very affectionate nature, is glad to have the comfort
of his hand.
'What do we really know about mother, Cosmo?' she says darkly.
They are perhaps a touching pair.
'There are her letters, Amy.'
'Can one know a person by letters? Does she know you, Cosmo, by your
letters to her, saying that your motto is "Something attempted,
something done to earn a night's repose," and so on.'
'Well, I thought that would please her.'
'Perhaps in her letters she says things just to please us.'
Cosmo wriggles.
'This is pretty low of you, damping a fellow when he was trying to
make the best of it.'
'All I want you to feel,' Amy says, getting closer to him, 'is that as
brother and sister, we are allies, you know--against the unknown.'
'Yes, Amy,' Cosmo says, and gets closer to her.
This so encourages her that she hastens to call him 'dear.'
'I want to say, dear, that I'm very sorry I used to shirk bowling to
you.'
'That's nothing. I know what girls are. Amy, it's all right, I really
am fond of you.'
'I have tried to be a sort of mother to you, Cosmo.'
'My socks and things--I know.' Returning anxiously to the greater
question, 'Amy, do we know anything of them at all?'
'We know some cold facts, of course. We know that father is much older
than mother.'
'I can't understand why such an old chap should be so keen to kiss
me.'
'Mother is forty,' Amy says in a low voice.
'I thought she was almost more than forty,' Cosmo says in a still
lower voice.
Amy shudders. 'Don't be so ungenerous, Cosmo.' But she has to add. 'Of
course we must be prepared to see her look older.'
'Why?'
'She will be rather yellow, coming from India, you know. They will
both be a little yellow.'
They exchange forlorn glances, but Cosmo says manfully, 'We shan't be
any the less fond of them for that, Amy.'
'No, indeed.'
They clasp hands on it, and Cosmo has an inspiration.
'Do you think we should have these yellow flowers in the room? They
might feel--eh?'
'How thoughtful of you, dear. I shall remove them at once. After all,
Cosmo, we seem to know a good deal about them; and then we know some
other things by heredity.'
'Heredity? That's drink, isn't it?'
She who has been to so many theatres smiles at him. 'No, you boy! It's
something in a play. It means that if we know ourselves well, we know
our parents also. From thinking of myself, Cosmo, I know mother. In
her youth she was one who did not love easily; but when she loved once
it was for aye. A nature very difficult to understand, but profoundly
interesting. I can feel her _within me_, as she was when she walked down
the aisle on that strong arm, to honour and obey him henceforth for aye.
What cared they that they had to leave their native land, they were
together for aye. And so--' Her face is flushed. Cosmo interrupts
selfishly.
'What about father?'
'Very nice, unless you mention rupees to him. You see the pensions of
all Indian officers are paid in rupees, which means that for every 2s.
due to them they get only 1s. 4d. If you mention rupees to any one of
them he flares up like a burning paper.'
'I know. I shall take care. But what would you say he was like by
heredity?'
'Quiet, unassuming, yet of an intensely proud nature. One who if he
was deceived would never face his fellow-creatures, but would bow his
head before the wind and die. A strong man.'
'Do you mean, Amy, that he takes all that from me?'
'I mean that is the sort of man _my_ mother would love.'
Cosmo nods. 'Yes, but he is just as likely to kiss me as ever.'
The return of Ginevra makes him feel that this room is no place for
him.
'I think,' he says, 'I'll go and walk up and down outside, and have a
look at them as they're getting out of the cab. My plan, you see, is
first to kiss mother. Then I've made up four things to say to father,
and it's after I've said them that the awkward time will come. So then
I say, "I wonder what is in the evening papers"; and out I slip, and
when I come back you will all have settled down to ordinary life, same
as other people. That's my plan.' He goes off, not without hope, and
Ginevra shrugs her shoulders forgivingly.
'How strange boys are,' she reflects. 'Have you any "plan," Amy?'
'Only this, dear Ginevra, to leap into my mother's arms.'
Ginevra lifts what can only be called a trouser leg, because that is
what it is, though they are very seldom seen alone. 'What is this my
busy bee is making?'
'It's a gentleman's leg,' Amy explains, not without a sweet blush.
'You hand-sew them and stretch them over a tin cylinder, and they are
then used as umbrella stands. _Art in the Home_ says they are all
the rage.'
'Oh, Amy, _Boudoir Gossip_ says they have quite gone out.'
'Again! Every art decoration I try goes out before I have time to
finish it.'
She remembers the diary.
'Did my Ginevra like my new page?'
'Dearest, that is what I came down to speak about. You forgot to give
me the key.'
'Ginevra, can you ever forgive me? Let us go up and read it together.'
With arms locked they seek the seclusion of Amy's bedroom. Cosmo
rushes in to tell them that there is a suspicious-looking cab coming
down the street, but finding the room empty he departs again to
reconnoitre. A cab draws up, a bell rings, and soon we hear the voice
of Colonel Grey. He can talk coherently to Fanny, he can lend a hand
in dumping down his luggage in the passage, he can select from a
handful of silver wherewith to pay his cabman: all impossible deeds to
his Alice, who would drop the luggage on your toes and cast all the
silver at your face rather than be kept another minute from her
darlings. 'Where are they?' she has evidently cried just before we see
her, and Fanny has made a heartless response, for it is a dejected
Alice that appears in the doorway of the room.
'_All_ out!' she echoes wofully, 'even--even baby?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
The poor mother, who had entered the house like a whirlwind, subsides
into a chair. Her arms fall empty by her side: a moment ago she had
six of them, a pair for each child. She cries a little, and when Alice
cries, which is not often for she is more given to laughter, her face
screws up like Molly's rather than like Amy's. She is very unlike the
sketch of her lately made by the united fancies of her son and
daughter; and she will dance them round the room many times before
they know her better. Amy will never be so pretty as her mother, Cosmo
will never be so gay, and it will be years before either of them is as
young. But it is quite a minute before we suspect this; we must look
the other way while the Colonel dries her tears. He is quite a
grizzled veteran, and is trying hard to pretend that having done
without his children for so many years, a few minutes more is no great
matter. His adorable Alice is this man's one joke. Some of those
furrows in his brow have come from trying to understand her, he owes
the agility of his mind to trying to keep up with her; the humorous
twist in his mouth is the result of chuckling over her.
She flutters across the room. 'Robert,' she says, thrilling. 'I
daresay my Amy painted that table.'
'Yes, ma'am, she did,' says Fanny.
'Robert, Amy's table.'
'Yes, but keep cool, memsahib.'
'I suppose, ma'am, I'm to take my orders from you now,' the
hard-hearted Fanny inquires.
'I suppose so,' Alice says, so timidly that Fanny is encouraged to be
bold.
'The poor miss, it will be a bit trying for her just at first.'
Alice is taken aback.
'I hadn't thought of that, Robert.'
Robert thinks it time to take command.
'Fiddle-de-dee. Bring your mistress a cup of tea, my girl.'
'Yes, sir. Here is the tea-caddy, ma'am. I can't take the
responsibility; but this is the key.'
'Robert,' Alice says falteringly. 'I daren't break into Amy's caddy.
She mightn't like it. I can wait.'
'Rubbish. Give me the key.' Even Fanny cannot but admire the Colonel
as he breaks into the caddy.
'That makes me feel I'm master of my own house already. Don't stare at
me, girl, as if I was a housebreaker.'
'I feel that is just what we both are,' his wife says; but as soon as
they are alone she cries, 'It's home, home! India done, home begun.'
He is as glad as she.
'Home, memsahib. And we've never had a real one before. Thank God, I'm
able to give it you at last.'
She darts impulsively from one object in the room to another.
'Look, these pictures. I'm sure they are all Amy's work. They are
splendid.' With perhaps a moment's misgiving, 'Aren't they?'
'_I_ couldn't have done them,' the Colonel says guardedly. He
considers the hand-painted curtains. 'She seems to have stopped
everything in the middle. Still I couldn't have done them. I expect
this is what is called a cosy corner.'
But Alice has found something more precious. She utters little cries
of rapture.
'What is it?'
'Oh, Robert, a baby's shoe. My baby.' She presses it to her as if it
were a dove. Then she is appalled. 'Robert, if I had met my baby
coming along the street I shouldn't have known her from other people's
babies.'
'Yes, you would,' the Colonel says hurriedly. 'Don't break down
_now_. Just think, Alice; after to-day, you will know your baby
anywhere.'
'Oh joy, joy, joy.'
Then the expression of her face changes to 'Oh woe, woe, woe.'
'What is it now, Alice?'
'Perhaps she won't like me.'
'Impossible.'
'Perhaps none of them will like me.'
'My dear Alice, children always love their mother, whether they see
much of her or not. It's an instinct.'