Henry Arthur Jones

“ MICH. I have done to you this morning as I would wish to be done by if I had followed a course of continued deception.
ANDR. Ah, sir, it’s easy for you to talk. You aren’t likely to be tempted, so you aren’t likely to fall.
MICH. I trust not! I pray God to keep me. But if ever I did, I should think him my true friend who made me confess and rid my soul of my guilt. And you think me your true friend, don’t you, Andrew? (Holding out hand.) Won’t you shake hands with me?
(ANDREW takes MICHAEL’S hand reluctantly, shakes it half-heartedly; is going off at door.) ”

“ AUDR. What a world there is within oneself that one never dares speak of! I wish to hide nothing from you. I would have you know me through and through for just the woman that I am, just that and no other, because, don’t you see—I don’t want to cheat you of a farthing’s-worth of esteem on false pretences—I want you to like me, Audrie Lesden, and not some myth of your imagination. But if you were armed with all the tortures of hell for plucking the truth about myself from my lips, I should still hide myself from you. ”

“ Jones has, with the power of a master, constructed a play of engrossing interest, knit together with a strength and breadth of grasp which leaves a feeling of astonishment at the close of the play, astonishment, because the picturesqueness, and the sorrowful reality of the play are borne down upon you with a force and intenseness that leave no escape for the mind to speculate or to anticipate. The fascination of the picture is absorbing and complete, and one bounds back to stalls and human faces at the close of each act with a thud in the brain. ”

“ If her soul is swinging between heaven and hell, it would only be kind of you to give it a jog towards heaven.
MICH. Very well—ask her. But I would rather you didn’t speak lightly of——
SIR LYOLF. Of her soul?
MICH. Of anyone’s soul?
SIR LYOLF. I won’t—even of a woman’s. But I wish they wouldn’t swing about. Women’s souls oughtn’t to swing anywhere, except towards heaven. Ah, Michael, you must let me have my fling. Remember when I was a boy, religion was a very simple, easy-going affair. Parson—clerk—old three-decker pulpit—village choir. What a village choir! ”

“ MICH. Religion is not simple—or easy-going.
SIR LYOLF. No. Subtlety again. I want a plain “yes” or “no,” a plain black or white, a plain right or wrong, and none of our teachers or preachers is prepared to give it to me. Oh dear! This world has grown too subtle for me! I’ll step over to Island House and ask Mrs. Lesden to dinner to-morrow.
MARK. I’ll come with you and pay my respects to her. You don’t mind, Michael?
MICH. Not at all. I want to set Andrew to work at once to keep him from dwelling on his trouble.
SIR LYOLF. I didn’t come to the church this morning. ”

“ To-morrow before the dedication service begins, I shall stand where I’m standing now and confess that I have been guilty of deadly sin and deceit. Then I shall go out from this place and never return.
(They come away from him, staring at him in speechless surprise for some moments.)
SIR LYOLF. But—Good Heaven!—what have you done?
MICH. (after a long pause) . Guess.
SIR LYOLF. But you won’t proclaim yourself?
MICH. Yes.
SIR LYOLF. But your career—your reputation—your opportunities of doing good——
MARK. Have you thought what this will mean to you, to us, to the church? ”

“ In some respects the loves of Michael Feversham and Audrie Lesden seem to take rank with the masterpieces of human passion, if not with Romeo and Juliet, with Cupid and Psyche, with Paul and Virginia, and shall I add with Edgar of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton, at least with Helen and Paris, Antony and Cleopatra, and Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier des Grieux. Just enough of fatefulness as well as of human wilfulness is there to add the crowning grace of tragedy by showing man the sport of circumstance. ”

“ It’s an awful delight to think that a man would dare to risk hell for one! There aren’t many men who would dare lose this world for the woman they love—how many men are there that would dare to lose the other? ”

“ The wind that blows round here may perhaps play round her brow, the very breath that met my lips as I stood at the door may meet hers on the shore yonder. (Rises, flings book on table, goes to window; takes out letter again, holds it undecidedly.) Why shouldn’t I read it? Every stroke of it is graven on my heart.— (Opens it.) “Dear keeper of souls in this parish, I have thought so much of our talk last night. I’m inclined to think that I have a soul after all, but it is a most uncomfortable possession. ”

“ MICH. You’re ready to start, Uncle Ned?
FATHER H. Yes. You won’t change your mind and come with us?
MICH. No, I must stay here. (Glancing at books, restlessly.) I want to be alone. I couldn’t be of any service to you over at Saint Margaret’s?
FATHER H. There is the legend that connects her with Saint Decuman—I suppose no more is to be learnt of that than we already know?
MICH. No. The fisher people only know what they have learnt from the guide books.
ANDR. (standing with portmanteau) . Have you anything more to take to the boat, Father?
FATHER H. No, that’s all, Andrew. ”

“ AUDR. Love is hardly the word. It is more like—if a man could create a dog, and be her master, friend, father, and God, I think she would feel towards him something of what I feel towards you. You have first made me know what love is, what life is. You have changed me thoroughly—no, you have changed half of me thoroughly—one half is still worthless, silly, capricious, hollow, worldly, and bad—that’s my old self. She is gradually withering up under your influence, that old Audrie Lesden. ”

“ It’s more horrible than any creature that was ever seen. It comes and sits in my heart and watches me with those cold eyes that never shut, and never sleep, and never pity. At first it came only very seldom; these last few months it has scarcely left me day or night, only at night it’s deadlier and more distorted and weighs more upon me. It’s not fancy. Mark, I know, I know, that if I do not get rid of my sin, my hell will be to have that thing sitting beside me for ever and ever, watching me with its cold eyes. But (hopefully) I shall be rid of it after to-morrow. ”

“ Once more I repeat that “Michael and his Lost Angel” is the best play Mr. Jones has given the stage and is in the full sense a masterpiece. It is the work of a man conscious of strength, and sure of the weapons he employs. Whether the stage will know it again who shall say? It will at least take rank as literature and in its present shape appeal to most readers capable of having an independent opinion and clearing their minds of cant. ”

“ Don’t you find it an exquisite pleasure to feel your sense of power over your people, especially over us poor women?
MICH. When you come to me you are neither man nor woman—you are only a soul in sin and distress.
AUDR. Oh, no! I won’t be an “it.” I insist on being a woman, though I don’t mind having a soul—and in sin and distress, too. And I would save it—only I always think it’s such a selfish piece of business, saving one’s soul,—don’t you?—so unkind to all one’s neighbours? (He stands half-bored, half-angry. A little pause.) Do you know what I was thinking in church this morning? ”

“ I believe if someone gave me an enormous impulse I might make a saint or a martyr, or anything that’s divine. And I believe there is one man living who could give me that impulse.” “One man living who could give me that impulse—” “But I hope he won’t. Frankly, you may save me at too great cost to yourself. So trouble yourself no further about me. But if after this, you still think my wandering, dangling soul worth a moment of your ghostly care, come and lunch with me to-morrow, and I will give you the sweet plain butter-cakes that you love, on the old blue china. ”

“ Here are the materials for a tragedy, and a tragedy is the outcome. The idea is happy, the execution is superb, and the result is a play that must be pronounced so far Mr. Jones’s masterpiece, and that is in effect one of the worthiest and in the highest sense of the word, putting apart the financial result and judging only from the [Pg xv] standpoint of art, one of the most successful dramas of the age. For the first time the dramatist has divested himself of all adventitious aid or support, swimming boldly and skilfully on the sea of drama. ”

“ Don’t all our souls swing continually between heaven and hell?
SIR LYOLF. Well, the woman whose soul swings continually between heaven and hell is not the woman whom I would choose to sit at my fireside or take the head of my table. ”

“ But for your [Pg 37] own sake—I speak with all a woman’s care for your earthly and heavenly welfare—I would rather you did not come. Let it be so. Let this be farewell. Perhaps our souls may salute each other in aimless vacancy hereafter, and I will smile as sweet a smile as I can without lips or cheeks to smile with, when I remember as I pass you in the shades that I saved you from your bad angel, Audrie Lesden. ”

“ How men try to make their religion square with their practice! I was hard, cruelly hard, on that poor little girl of Andrew’s. I was sure it was for the good of her soul that she should stand up and confess in public. But now it comes to my own self, I make excuses; I hide, and cloak, and equivocate, and lie—what a hypocrite I am! ”

“ I shall never breathe a word of what I know to a living soul.
[Pg 65]
MICH. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you. And you’ll be sure above all that she is safe——
ANDR. As safe as if I were in the grave. You go your way, just the same as if I didn’t know.
MICH. Andrew.
ANDR. (comes back) . Sir——
MICH. (breaking down) . I was harsh and cruel to Rose. I punished her more than she deserved. I was a hard, self-righteous priest! I hadn’t been tempted myself then. Send for her to come home again! Comfort her and give her the best place in your heart. Write at once. Let her come back to-morrow! ”

“ We are no upholders of the morbid drama, of that dragging on to the stage social horrors merely for stage effect, but if we are to have a serious drama then let it be of the quality of ‘Michael and his Lost Angel’ produced last night at the Lyceum with but equivocal success. Mr. Jones has given us a play of heart-searching truth, a play based on the aspirations and failings of two souls, of love in conflict with religion. ”

“ He has brought to bear on it a depth of study and insight into the workings of the human heart most profoundly true, and he has clothed the skeleton of his drama with language so noble and expressive that a single hearing enables one to do it only faint justice. ”

“ The deed is done, he belongs to the woman with whom he has sinned, the past is ineffaceable: no expiation can alter, even if it may atone. He is, moreover, impenitent in the midst of penitence, fiercely glad, fiercely happy, in what he has done, ready to face all tribulation, loss, and reproach, rather than sacrifice the burning, maddening, joyous knowledge of his guilt. This is the spirit in which love in strong, [Pg xix] austere, unemotional natures manifests itself. “All for love or the world well lost” is the title Dryden gives his alteration of Antony and Cleopatra. ”

“ Not a character unnecessary to the action is introduced, not a word that is superfluous or rhetorical is spoken. Free from obstruction, unpolluted and undefiled, a limpid stream of human life and love flows into the ocean of defeat and death. ”

“ AUDR. The next time I saw you, you let me kiss your mother’s portrait.
MICH. Ah!
AUDR. But you don’t really believe there is a devil? Why don’t you speak? Why don’t you laugh at me and tell me it’s all nonsense? I haven’t really given the devil power over your soul?
MICH. No devil has any power over any soul of man until the man himself first gives him entrance and consent. ”

“ I felt myself beginning to love you. I wrote urgently to Uncle Ned in Italy, thinking I’d tell him and that he would save me. He came. I couldn’t tell him of you, but his coming kept Withycombe [the boatman] from getting your telegram. I went to Saint Decuman’s to escape from you. You were moved to come to me. I sent away my own boat to put the sea between us: and so I imprisoned you with me. Six years ago I used all my influence to have the new lighthouse built on Saint Margaret’s Isle instead of Saint Decuman’s, so that I might keep Saint Decuman’s lonely for myself and prayer. ”

“ I would willingly have borne it for you, but that would not [Pg 7] have made reparation to those whom you have deceived, or given you peace in your own soul. (She continues sobbing.) Hush! Hush! All the bitterness is past! Look only to the future! Think of the happy newness and whiteness of your life from this moment! Think of the delight of waking in the morning and knowing that you have nothing to hide! Be sure you have done right to own your sin. There won’t be a softer pillow in England to-night than the one your head rests upon. ”

“ Jones’s mind, or the effect of his early environment, seems to force him into showing the struggle between religious or priestly training, and high and sincere aspiration, on the one hand, and, on the other, those influences, half earthly, half divine, of our physical nature, which sap where they cannot escalade, and, in the highest natures, end always in victory. There is nothing in Michael Feversham of the hypocrite, little even of the Puritan. ”

“ Jones’s especial gifts, and never before has he, from the purely literary point of view, accomplished anything so refined and poetical in expression, so instinct with the true language of the heart. Whatever may be the success of the new play from the box-office point of view, there is no doubt that it will rank in the minds of thoughtful men as his finest work. ”