The Mob | Page 8

you play just one more?
She returns from the window, and seeing her mother lost in thought,
rubs herself against her.
OLIVE. Have you got an ache?
KATHARINE. Right through me, darling!
OLIVE. Oh!
[The musicians strike up a dance.]
OLIVE. Oh! Mummy! I must just dance!
She kicks off her lisle blue shoes, and begins dancing. While she is
capering HUBERT comes in from the hall. He stands watching his little
niece for a minute, and KATHERINE looks at him.
HUBERT. Stephen gone!
KATHERINE. Yes--stop, Olive!
OLIVE. Are you good at my sort of dancing, Uncle?
HUBERT. Yes, chick--awfully!
KATHERINE. Now, Olive!
The musicians have suddenly broken off in the middle of a bar. From
the street comes the noise of distant shouting.
OLIVE. Listen, Uncle! Isn't it a particular noise?
HUBERT and KATHERINE listen with all their might, and OLIVE
stares at their faces. HUBERT goes to the window. The sound comes
nearer. The shouted words are faintly heard: "Pyper---- war----our force
crosses frontier--sharp fightin'----pyper."
KATHERINE. [Breathless] Yes! It is.

The street cry is heard again in two distant voices coming from
different directions: "War--pyper--sharp fightin' on the frontier--pyper."
KATHERINE. Shut out those ghouls!
As HUBERT closes the window, NURSE WREFORD comes in from
the hall. She is an elderly woman endowed with a motherly grimness.
She fixes OLIVE with her eye, then suddenly becomes conscious of the
street cry.
NURSE. Oh! don't say it's begun.
[HUBERT comes from the window.]
NURSE. Is the regiment to go, Mr. Hubert?
HUBERT. Yes, Nanny.
NURSE. Oh, dear! My boy!
KATHERINE. [Signing to where OLIVE stands with wide eyes]
Nurse!
HUBERT. I'll look after him, Nurse.
NURSE. And him keepin' company. And you not married a year. Ah!
Mr. Hubert, now do 'ee take care; you and him's both so rash.
HUBERT. Not I, Nurse!
NURSE looks long into his face, then lifts her finger, and beckons
OLIVE.
OLIVE. [Perceiving new sensations before her, goes quietly] Good-
night, Uncle! Nanny, d'you know why I was obliged to come down? [In
a fervent whisper] It's a secret!
[As she passes with NURSE out into the hall, her voice is heard saying,
"Do tell me all about the war."]
HUBERT. [Smothering emotion under a blunt manner] We sail on
Friday, Kit. Be good to Helen, old girl.
KATHERINE. Oh! I wish----! Why--can't--women--fight?
HUBERT. Yes, it's bad for you, with Stephen taking it like this. But
he'll come round now it's once begun.
KATHERINE shakes her head, then goes suddenly up to him, and
throws her arms round his neck. It is as if all the feeling pent up in her
were finding vent in this hug.
The door from the hall is opened, and SIR JOHN'S voice is heard
outside: "All right, I'll find her."
KATHERINE. Father!
[SIR JOHN comes in.]

SIR JOHN. Stephen get my note? I sent it over the moment I got to the
War Office.
KATHERINE. I expect so. [Seeing the torn note on the table] Yes.
SIR JOHN. They're shouting the news now. Thank God, I stopped that
crazy speech of his in time.
KATHERINE. Have you stopped it?
SIR JOHN. What! He wouldn't be such a sublime donkey?
KATHERINE. I think that is just what he might be. [Going to the
window] We shall know soon.
[SIR JOHN, after staring at her, goes up to HUBERT.]
SIR JOHN. Keep a good heart, my boy. The country's first. [They
exchange a hand-squeeze.]
KATHERINE backs away from the window. STEEL has appeared
there from the terrace, breathless from running.
STEEL. Mr. More back?
KATHERINE. No. Has he spoken?
STEEL. Yes.
KATHERINE. Against?
STEEL. Yes.
SIR JOHN. What? After!
SIR, JOHN stands rigid, then turns and marches straight out into the
hall. At a sign from KATHERINE, HUBERT follows him.
KATHERINE. Yes, Mr. Steel?
STEEL. [Still breathless and agitated] We were here--he slipped away
from me somehow. He must have gone straight down to the House. I
ran over, but when I got in under the Gallery he was speaking already.
They expected something--I never heard it so still there. He gripped
them from the first word--deadly--every syllable. It got some of those
fellows. But all the time, under the silence you could feel a--sort
of--of--current going round. And then Sherratt--I think it was--began it,
and you saw the anger rising in them; but he kept them down--his
quietness! The feeling! I've never seen anything like it there.
Then there was a whisper all over the House that fighting had begun.
And the whole thing broke out--regular riot--as if they could have
killed him. Some one tried to drag him down by the coat-tails, but he
shook him off, and went on. Then he stopped dead and walked out, and
the noise dropped like a stone. The whole thing didn't last five