Dear Brutus | Page 8

wonder why, I wonder why?
(In this wonder which is shared by JOANNA their lips meet, and MABEL, who has been about to enter from the garden quietly retires.)
JOANNA. Was that any one in the garden?
PURDIE (returning from a quest). There is no one there now.
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.
(Having thus passed the time of day with them she withdraws by the door, leaving JACK bewildered and JOANNA knowing all about it.)
JOANNA. How extraordinary! Of all the--! Oh, but how contemptible! (She sweeps to the door and calls to MABEL by name.)
MABEL (returning with promptitude). Did you call me, Joanna?
JOANNA (guardedly). I insist on an explanation. (With creditable hauteur.) What were you doing in the garden, Mabel?
MABEL (who has not been so quiet all day). I was looking for something I have lost.
PURDIE (hope springing eternal). Anything important?
MABEL. I used to fancy it, Jack. It is my husband's love. You don't happen to have picked it up, Joanna? If so and you don't set great store by it I should like it back--the pieces, I mean.
(MR. PURDIE is about lo reply to this, when JOANNA rather wisely fills the breach.)
JOANNA. Mabel, I--I will not be talked to in that way. To imply that I--that your husband--oh, shame!
PURDIE (finely). I must say, Mabel, that I am a little disappointed in you. I certainly understood that you had gone upstairs to put on your boots.
MABEL. Poor old Jack. (She muses.) A woman like that!
JOANNA (changing her comment in the moment of utterance), I forgive you Mabel, you will be sorry for this afterwards.
PURDIE (warningly, but still reluctant to think less well of his wife). Not a word against Joanna, Mabel. If you knew how nobly she has spoken of you.
JOANNA (imprudently). She does know. She has been listening.
(There is a moment's danger of the scene degenerating into something mid-Victorian. Fortunately a chivalrous man is present to lift it to a higher plane. JOHN PURDIE is one to whom subterfuge of any kind is abhorrent; if he has not spoken out before it is because of his reluctance to give MABEL pain. He speaks out now, and seldom probably has he proved himself more worthy.)
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. We are one rather than two.
MABEL (looking at JOANNA). Yes, and that's the one! (With the cheapest sarcasm.) I am so sorry to have marred your lives.
PURDIE. If any blame there is, it is all mine; she is as spotless as the driven snow. The moment I mentioned love to her she told me to desist.
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.
PURDIE. Have you noticed that? Poor Mabel, it is not an enviable quality.
JOANNA (despondently). I don't think I care to go out now. She has spoilt it all. She has taken the innocence out of it, Jack.
PURDIE (a rock). We must be brave and not mind her. Ah, Joanna, if we had met in time. If only I could begin again. To be battered for ever just because I once took the wrong turning, it isn't fair.
JOANNA (emerging from his arms).