J. M. Barrie

“ MABEL. Poor little Joanna! Still, if a woman insists on being a pendulum round a man's neck ...
PURDIE. Do give me a chance, Mabel. If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ...
(JOANNA comes through the curtains so inopportunely that for the moment he is almost pettish.)
May I say, this is just a little too much, Joanna!
JOANNA (unconscious as they of her return to her dinner gown) . So, sweet husband, your soul is still walking alone, is it?
MABEL (who hates coarseness of any kind) . How can you sneak about in this way, Joanna? Have you no pride? ”

“ PURDIE (saying good-bye to an old friend) . John Purdie, John Purdie, the fine fellow I used to think you! (When he is able to look them in the face again.) The wood has taught me one thing, at any rate.
MABEL (dismally) . What, Jack?
PURDIE. That it isn't accident that shapes our lives.
JOANNA. No, it's Fate.
PURDIE (the truth running through him, seeking for a permanent home in him, willing to give him still another chance, loth to desert him) . It's not Fate, Joanna. Fate is something outside us. What really plays the dickens with us is some thing in ourselves. ”

“ PURDIE (shivering) . Something we are born with.
JOANNA. Can't we cut out the beastly thing?
PURDIE. Depends, I expect, on how long we have pampered him. We can at least control him if we try hard enough. But I have for the moment an abominably clear perception that the likes of me never really tries. Forgive me, Joanna—no, Mabel—both of you. (He is a shamed man.) It isn't very pleasant to discover that one is a rotter. I suppose I shall get used to it.
JOANNA. I could forgive anybody anything to-night. (Candidly.) It is so lovely not to be married to you, Jack. ”

“ The room is so obscure as to be invisible, but at the back of the obscurity are French windows, through which is seen Lob's garden bathed in moon-shine. The Darkness and Light, which this room and garden represent, are very still, but we should feel that it is only the pause in which old enemies regard each other before they come to the grip. The moonshine stealing about among the flowers, to give them their last instructions, has left a smile upon them, but it is a smile with a menace in it for the dwellers in darkness. ”

“ I suppose there never was a man who had a more lowly opinion of himself.
MABEL. Jack, you who are so universally admired.
PURDIE. That doesn't help; I remain my own judge. I am afraid I am a dark spirit, Mabel. Yes, yes, my dear, let me leave nothing untold however it may damage me in your eyes. Your eyes! I cannot remember a time when I did not think of Love as a great consuming passion; I visualised it, Mabel, as perhaps few have done, but always as the abounding joy that could come to others but never to me. ”

“ DEARTH. That's about it. What a life! But I oughtn't to have brought you here. Best to have the sheet over you when the moon is about; moonlight is bad for little daughters.
MARGARET (pelting him with nuts) . I can't sleep when the moon's at the full; she keeps calling to me to get up. Perhaps I am her daughter too.
DEARTH. Gad, you look it to-night.
MARGARET. Do I? Then can't you paint me into the picture as well as Mamma? You could call it 'A Mother and Daughter' or simply 'Two ladies.' if the moon thinks that calling me her daughter would make her seem too old. ”

“ MATEY. He always likes them to be here on Midsummer night, ma'am.
ALICE. Them? Whom?
MATEY. Them who have that in common.
MABEL. What can it be?
MATEY. I don't know.
LADY CAROLINE (suddenly introspective) . I hope we are all nice women? We don't know each other very well. (Certain suspicions are reborn in various breasts.) Does anything startling happen at those times?
MATEY. I don't know.
JOANNA. Why, I believe this is Midsummer Eve!
MATEY. Yes, miss, it is. The villagers know it. They are all inside their houses, to-night—with the doors barred. ”

“ Jack, try not to say it, but if you feel you must, say it in such a way that it would not hurt the feelings of Joanna if she happened to be passing by, as she nearly always is.
(A little moan from JOANNA'S tree is unnoticed.)
PURDIE. I would rather not say it at all than that way. (He is touchingly anxious that she should know him as he really is.) I don't know, Mabel, whether you have noticed that I am not like other men. (He goes deeply into the very structure of his being.) All my life I have been a soul that has had to walk alone. ”

“ For that matter, Dearth, I daresay you were different in the wood, too.
(DEARTH sees his own clothing.)
DEARTH. What...!
ALICE (frightened) . Where am I? (To Mrs. Coade.) I seem to know you ... do I?
MRS. COADE (motherly) . Yes, you do; hold my hand, and you will soon remember all about it.
JOANNA. I am afraid, Mr. Dearth, it is harder for you than for the rest of us.
PURDIE (looking away) . I wish I could help you, but I can't; I am a rotter.
MABEL. We are awfully sorry. Don't you remember ... Midsummer Eve?
DEARTH (controlling himself) . Midsummer Eve? This room. ”

“ PURDIE. This is a man's business. I must be open with you now, Mabel: it is the manlier way. If you wish it I shall always be true to you in word and deed; it is your right. But I cannot pretend that Joanna is not the one woman in the world for me. If I had met her before you—it's Kismet, I suppose. (He swells.)
JOANNA (from a chair) . Too late, too late.
MABEL (although the woman has seen him swell) . I suppose you never knew what true love was till you met her, Jack?
PURDIE. You force me to say it. Joanna and I are as one person. We have not a thought at variance. ”

“ JOANNA. No offence; I mean a pilferer on a large scale.
MATEY (remembering certain newspaper jealousy) . If you are referring to that Labrador business—or the Working Women's Bank ...
PURDIE (after the manner of one who has caught a fly) . O-ho, got him!
JOANNA (bowing) . Yes, those are what I meant.
MATEY (stoutly) . There was nothing proved.
JOANNA (like one calling a meeting) . Mabel, Jack, here is another of us! You have gone just the same way again, my friend. (Ecstatically.) There is more in it, you see, than taking the wrong turning; you would always take the wrong turning. ”

“ MATEY. He frightens them. There are stories.
ALICE. What alarms them? Tell us—or— (She brandishes the telegram.)
MATEY. I know nothing for certain, ma'am. I have never done it myself. He has wanted me to, but I wouldn't.
MABEL. Done what?
MATEY (with fine appeal) . Oh. ma'am, don't ask me. Be merciful to me, ma'am. I am not bad naturally. It was just going into domestic service that did for me; the accident of being flung among bad companions. It's touch and go how the poor turn out in this world; all depends on your taking the right or the wrong turning. ”

“ I beg to assure you that I adore my Jim.
(She seeks his arm, but her Jim has encountered the tray containing coffee cups and a cake, and his hands close on it with a certain intimacy.) Whatever are you doing, Jim?
MATEY. I don't understand it, Caroliny; but somehow I feel at home with this in my hands.
MABEL. 'Caroliny!'
MRS. COADE. Look at me well; don't you remember me?
MATEY (musing) . I don't remember you; but I seem to associate you with hard-boiled eggs. (With conviction.) You like your eggs hard-boiled.
PURDIE. Hold on to hard-boiled eggs! ”

“ There are five ladies, and one only of them is elderly, the Mrs. Coade whom a voice in the darkness has already proclaimed the nicest. She is the nicest, though the voice was no good judge. Coady, as she is familiarly called and as her husband also is called, each having for many years been able to answer for the other, is a rounded old lady with a beaming smile that has accompanied her from childhood. If she lives to be a hundred she will pretend to the census man that she is only ninety-nine. ”

“ Purdie is a safer companion for the toddling kind of man. She is soft and pleading, and would seek what she wants by laying her head on the loved one's shoulder, while The Dearth might attain it with a pistol. A brighter spirit than either is Joanna Trout who, when her affections are not engaged, has a merry face and figure, but can dismiss them both at the important moment, which is at the word 'love.' Then Joanna quivers, her sense of humour ceases to beat and the dullest man may go ahead. ”

“ JOANNA. I am sure I heard some one. If it was Mabel! (With a perspicacity that comes of knowledge of her sex.) Jack, if she saw us she will think you were kissing me.
(These fears are confirmed by the rather odd bearing of MABEL, who now joins their select party.)
MABEL (apologetically) . I am so sorry to interrupt you, Jack; but please wait a moment before you kiss her again. Excuse me, Joanna. (She quietly draws the curtains, thus shutting out the garden and any possible onlooker.) I did not want the others to see you; they might not understand how noble you are, Jack. You can go on now. ”

“ It is also a different PURDIE. In company they seldom look at each other, though when the one does so the eyes of the other magnetically respond. We have seen them trivial, almost cynical, but now we are to greet them as they know they really are, the great strong-hearted man and his natural mate, in the grip of the master passion. For the moment LOB'S words have unnerved JOANNA and it is JOHN PURDIE's dear privilege to soothe her.)
PURDIE. No one minds Lob. My dear, oh my dear.
JOANNA (faltering) . Yes, but he saw you kiss my hand. Jack, if Mabel were to suspect! ”

“ Fame is not everything.
DEARTH. Fame is rot; daughters are the thing.
MARGARET. Daughters are the thing.
DEARTH. Daughters are the thing.
MARGARET. I wonder if sons would be even nicer?
DEARTH. Not a patch on daughters. The awful thing about a son is that never, never—at least, from the day he goes to school—can you tell him that you rather like him. By the time he is ten you can't even take him on your knee. Sons are not worth having, Margaret. Signed W. Dearth.
MARGARET. But if you were a mother, Dad, I daresay he would let you do it. ”

“ MABEL. Not she.
JOANNA. So you were listening! (The obtuseness of MABEL is very strange to her.) Mabel, don't you see how splendid he is!
MABEL. Not quite, Joanna.
(She goes away. She is really a better woman than this, but never capable of scaling that higher plane to which he has, as it were, offered her a hand.)
JOANNA. How lovely of you, Jack, to take it all upon yourself.
PURDIE (simply) . It is the man's privilege.
JOANNA. Mabel has such a horrid way of seeming to put people in the wrong. ”

“ JOANNA (unguardedly) . Matey! I wonder who is with him.
MRS. COADE. Must somebody be with him?
JOANNA. Oh, no, not at all.
(They are simultaneously aware that someone outside has reached the window.)
MRS. COADE. I hope it is Coady.
(The other ladies are too fond of her to share this wish.)
MABEL. Oh, I hope not.
MRS. COADE (blissfully) . Why, Mrs. Purdie?
JOANNA (coaxingly) . Dear Mrs. Coade, whoever he is, and whatever he does, I beg you not to be surprised. We feel that though we had no unusual experiences in the wood, others may not have been so fortunate. ”

“ MATEY. It is deeply regretted.
ALICE (darkly) . I am sure it is.
JOANNA (who has seldom remained silent for so long) . We may as well tell him now that it is not our rings we are worrying about. They have just been a means to an end, Matey.
(The stir among the ladies shows that they have arrived at the more interesting point.)
ALICE. Precisely. In other words that telegram is sent unless—
(MATEY'S head rises.)
JOANNA. Unless you can tell us instantly whet peculiarity it is that all we ladies have in common.
MABEL. Not only the ladies; all the guests in this house. ”

“ MRS. DEARTH laughs and forgets her, and with the entrance of a man from the dining room JOANNA drifts elsewhere. Not so much a man, this newcomer, as the relic of what has been a good one; it is the most he would ever claim for himself. Sometimes, brandy in hand, he has visions of the WILL DEARTH he used to be, clear of eye, sees him but a field away, singing at his easel or, fishing-rod in hand, leaping a stile. ”

“ JOANNA. How lovely; he is going to propose to her again. Coady, you happy thing, he is wanting the same soft face after thirty years!
MRS. COADE (undoubtedly hopeful) . We mustn't be too sure, but I think that is it. (Primly.) What is it exactly that you want, Mr. Coade?
COADE (under a lucky star) . I want to have the right to hold the parasol over you. Won't you be my wife, my dear, and so give my long dream of you a happy ending?
MRS. COADE (preening) . Kisses are not called for at our age, Coady, but here is a muffler for your old neck.
COADE. My muffler ”