J. M. Barrie

“ LADY MARY. If? Now I understand. The perfect servant at home holds that we are all equal now. I see.
CRICHTON (wounded to the quick) . My lady, can you think me so inconsistent?
LADY MARY. That is it.
CRICHTON (earnestly) . My lady, I disbelieved in equality at home because it was against nature, and for that same reason I as utterly disbelieve in it on an island.
LADY MARY (relieved by his obvious sincerity) . I apologise.
CRICHTON (continuing unfortunately) . There must always, my lady, be one to command and others to obey.
LADY MARY (satisfied) . One to command, others to obey. ”

“ Dear Polly, I have grown to love you; are you afraid to mate with me? (She rocks her arms; no words will come from her.) ‘I was a king in Babylon, And you were a Christian slave.’
LADY MARY (bewitched) . You are the most wonderful man I have ever known, and I am not afraid. (He takes her to him reverently. Presently he is seated, and she is at his feet looking up adoringly in his face. As the tension relaxes she speaks with a smile.) I want you to tell me—every woman likes to know—when was the first time you thought me nicer than the others?
CRICHTON (who, like all big men, is simple) . ”

“ CRICHTON (eagerly) . Yes, my lord, it is. That is what I have been striving to point out to your lordship.
AGATHA (to CATHERINE) . What is the matter with Fisher? She is looking daggers.
CATHERINE. The tedious creature; some question of etiquette, I suppose.
(She sails across to FISHER.)
How are you, Fisher?
FISHER (with a toss of her head) . I am nothing, my lady, I am nothing at all.
AGATHA. Oh dear, who says so?
FISHER (affronted) . His lordship has asked that kitchen wench to have a second cup of tea. ”

“ Ernest Woolley drives up to the door of Loam House in Mayfair. There is a happy smile on his pleasant, insignificant face, and this presumably means that he is thinking of himself. He is too busy over nothing, this man about town, to be always thinking of himself, but, on the other hand, he almost never thinks of any other person. Probably Ernest’s great moment is when he wakes of a morning and realises that he really is Ernest, for we must all wish to be that which is our ideal. We can conceive him springing out of bed light-heartedly and waiting for his man to do the rest. ”

“ The beginnings of a hut will also be seen, with Crichton driving its walls into the ground or astride its roof of saplings, for at present he is doing more than one thing at a time. In a red shirt, with the ends of his sailor’s breeches thrust into wading-boots, he looks a man for the moment; we suddenly remember some one’s saying—perhaps it was ourselves—that a cataclysm would be needed to get him out of his servant’s clothes, and apparently it has been forthcoming. It is no longer beneath our dignity to cast an inquiring eye on his appearance. ”

“ LADY MARY is a beautiful creature of twenty-two, and is of a natural hauteur which is at once the fury and the envy of her sisters. If she chooses she can make you seem so insignificant that you feel you might be swept away with the crumb-brush. She seldom chooses, because of the trouble of preening herself as she does it; she is usually content to show that you merely tire her eyes. ”

“ CRICHTON. If we did, my lady, the first thing we should do would be to elect a head. Circumstances might alter cases; the same person might not be master; the same persons might not be servants. I can’t say as to that, nor should we have the deciding of it. Nature would decide for us.
LADY MARY. You seem to have thought it all out carefully, Crichton. ”

“ There’s always work to do; but if you want me, Ernest—
ERNEST. There’s something I should like to say to you if you could spare me a moment.
TWEENY. Willingly. What is it?
ERNEST. What an ass I used to be, Tweeny.
TWEENY (tolerantly) . Oh, let bygones be bygones.
ERNEST (sincerely, and at his very best) . I’m no great shakes even now. But listen to this, Tweeny; I have known many women, but until I knew you I never knew any woman.
TWEENY (to whose uneducated ears this sounds dangerously like an epigram) . Take care—the bucket.
ERNEST (hurriedly) . I didn’t mean it in that way. ”

“ LADY MARY (afraid she has hurt him) . You haven’t for a very long time. Perhaps it is natural to servants.
CRICHTON. That must be it. (He rises.) Polly! (She looks up expectantly, but he only sighs and turns away.)
LADY MARY (gently) . You sighed, Gov.
CRICHTON. Did I? I was thinking. (He paces the room and then turns to her agitatedly, yet with control over his agitation. There is some mournfulness in his voice.) I have always tried to do the right thing on this island. Above all, Polly, I want to do the right thing by you.
LADY MARY (with shining eyes) . How we all trust you. ”

“ The curtain rises on a sea of bamboo, which shuts out all view save the foliage of palm trees and some gaunt rocks. Occasionally Crichton and Treherne come momentarily into sight, hacking and hewing the bamboo, through which they are making a clearing between the ladies and the shore; and by and by, owing to their efforts, we shall have an unrestricted outlook on to a sullen sea that is at present hidden. Then we shall also be able to note a mast standing out of the water—all that is left, saving floating wreckage, of the ill-fated yacht the Bluebell. ”

“ CRICHTON. My lord!
LORD LOAM. Treherne—Ernest—get our things.
ERNEST. We don’t have any, uncle. They all belong to Crichton.
TREHERNE. Everything we have he brought from the wreck—he went back to it before it sank. He risked his life.
CRICHTON. My lord, anything you would care to take is yours.
LADY MARY (quickly) . Nothing.
ERNEST. Rot! If I could have your socks, Crichton—
LADY MARY. Come, father; we are ready.
(Followed by the others, she and LORD LOAM pick their way up the rocks. In their indignation they scarcely notice that daylight is coming to a sudden end.) ”

“ That’s her; that’s the thing what has stole his heart from me. (A stalwart youth appears at the window, so handsome and tingling with vitality that, glad to depose CRICHTON, we cry thankfully, ‘The Hero at last.’ But it is not the hero; it is the heroine. This splendid boy, clad in skins, is what nature has done for LADY MARY. She carries bow and arrows and a blow-pipe, and over her shoulder is a fat buck, which she drops with a cry of triumph. Forgetting to enter demurely, she leaps through the window.) (Sourly.) Drat you, Polly, why don’t you wipe your feet? ”

“ Oh sir!
(After one failure the grass takes fire, and they are blowing on it when excited cries near by bring them sharply to their feet. AGATHA runs to them, white of face, followed by ERNEST.)
ERNEST. Danger! Crichton, a tiger-cat!
CRICHTON (getting his cutlass) . Where?
AGATHA. It is at our heels.
ERNEST. Look out, Crichton.
CRICHTON. H’sh!
(TREHERNE comes to his assistance, while LADY MARY and CATHERINE join AGATHA in the hut.) ERNEST. It will be on us in a moment. (He seizes the hatchet and guards the hut. It is pleasing to see that ERNEST is no coward.) ”

“ It would require a cataclysm. To be an indoor servant at all is to Crichton a badge of honour; to be a butler at thirty is the realisation of his proudest ambitions. He is devotedly attached to his master, who, in his opinion, has but one fault, he is not sufficiently contemptuous of his inferiors. We are immediately to be introduced to this solitary failing of a great English peer.
This perfect butler, then, opens a door, and ushers Ernest into a certain room. At the same moment the curtain rises on this room, and the play begins. ”

“ TWEENY (staring at her) . Aren’t you tired?
LADY MARY. Tired! It was gorgeous. (She runs up a ladder and deposits her weapons on the joists. She is whistling again.)
TWEENY (snapping) . I can’t abide a woman whistling.
LADY MARY (indifferently) . I like it.
TWEENY (stamping her foot) . Drop it, Polly, I tell you.
LADY MARY (stung) . I won’t. I’m as good as you are. (They are facing each other defiantly.)
ERNEST (shocked) . Is this necessary? Think how it would pain him. (LADY MARY’s eyes take a new expression. We see them soft for the first time.)
LADY MARY (contritely) . ”

“ He has a light nature, which would enable him to bob up cheerily in new conditions and return unaltered to the old ones. His selfishness is his most endearing quality. If he has his way he will spend his life like a cat in pushing his betters out of the soft places, and until he is old he will be fondled in the process.
He gives his hat to one footman and his cane to another, and mounts the great staircase unassisted and undirected. As a nephew of the house he need show no credentials even to Crichton, who is guarding a door above. ”

“ Except where the fire is, desolation has fallen on the island like a pall.
Once or twice, as nature dictates, CRICHTON leans forward to stir the pot, and the smell is borne westward. He then resumes his silent vigil.
Shadows other than those cast by the fire begin to descend the rocks. They are the adventurers returning. One by one they steal nearer to the pot until they are squatted round it, with their hands out to the blaze. LADY MARY only is absent. Presently she comes within sight of the others, then stands against a tree with her teeth clenched. ”

“ LADY MARY. It was glamour. Father, I have lived Arabian nights. I have sat out a dance with the evening star. But it was all in a past existence, in the days of Babylon, and I am myself again. But he has been chivalrous always. If the slothful, indolent creature I used to be has improved in any way, I owe it all to him. I am slipping back in many ways, but I am determined not to slip back altogether—in memory of him and his island. That is why I insisted on your telling Brocklehurst. He can break our engagement if he chooses. (Proudly.) Mary Lasenby is going to play the game. ”

“ Thank you, my lady.
(By this time most of the bamboo has been cut, and the shore and sea are visible, except where they are hidden by the half completed hut. The mast rising solitary from the water adds to the desolation of the scene, and at last tears run down LADY MARY’S face.)
CRICHTON. Don’t give way, my lady, things might be worse.
LADY MARY. My poor father.
CRICHTON. If I could have given my life for his.
LADY MARY. You did all a man could do. Indeed I thank you, Crichton. (With some admiration and more wonder.) You are a man. ”

“ LADY MARY (with confidence) . Crichton.
(He does not fail her. As quietly as if he were in goloshes, mind as well as feet, he dismisses the domestics; they go according to precedence as they entered, yet, in a moment, they are gone. Then he signs to MR. TREHERNE, and they conduct LORD LOAM with dignity from the room. His hands are still catching flies; he still mutters, ‘The proverb—that proverb’; but he continues, owing to CRICHTON’S skilful treatment, to look every inch a peer. The ladies have now an opportunity to air their indignation.)
LADY MARY. One maid among three grown women! ”

“ His face is still of the discreet pallor that befits a butler, and he carries the smaller logs as if they were a salver; not in a day or a month will he shake off the badge of servitude, but without knowing it he has begun.
But for the hatchets at work, and an occasional something horrible falling from a tree into the ladies’ laps, they hear nothing save the mournful surf breaking on a coral shore.
They sit or recline huddled together against a rock, and they are farther from home, in every sense of the word, than ever before. ”

“ It is one of several reception-rooms in Loam House, not the most magnificent but quite the softest; and of a warm afternoon all that those who are anybody crave for is the softest. The larger rooms are magnificent and bare, carpetless, so that it is an accomplishment to keep one’s feet on them; they are sometimes lent for charitable purposes; they are also all in use on the night of a dinner-party, when you may find yourself alone in one, having taken a wrong turning; or alone, save for two others who are within hailing distance.
This room, however, is comparatively small and very soft. ”

“ CRICHTON. The divisions into classes, my lord, are not artificial. They are the natural outcome of a civilised society. (To LADY MARY.) There must always be a master and servants in all civilised communities, my lady, for it is natural, and whatever is natural is right. ”

“ CRICHTON. If I might venture, my lady, would you kindly show it by becoming more like Lady Mary. That disdain is what we like from our superiors. Even so do we, the upper servants, disdain the lower servants, while they take it out of the odds and ends. ”

“ His dark hair, hitherto so decorously sleek, has been ruffled this way and that by wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and wanted to help his chance. His muscles must be soft and flabby still, but though they shriek aloud to him to desist, he rains lusty blows with his axe, like one who has come upon the open for the first time in his life, and likes it. He is as yet far from being an expert woodsman—mark the blood on his hands at places where he has hit them instead of the tree ”

“ The simple island meal is ended, save for the walnuts and the wine, and CRICHTON is too busy a man to linger long over them. But he is a stickler for etiquette, end the table is cleared charmingly, though with dispatch, before they are placed before him. LADY MARY is an artist with the crumb-brush, and there are few arts more delightful to watch. Dusk has come sharply, and she turns on the electric light. ”