Complete Poems and Plays (42 page)

Harry! Harry! It’s all
right,
I tell you.

If you will depend on me, it will be all right.

H
ARRY
.
Come out!

[
The
curtains
part,
revealing
the
Eumenides
in
the
window
embrasure.
]

Why do you show yourselves now for the first time?

When I knew her, I was not the same person.

I was not any person. Nothing that I did

Has to do with me. The accident of a dreaming moment,

Of a dreaming age, when I was someone else

Thinking of something else, puts me among you.

I tell you, it is not me you are looking at,

Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks

Incriminate, but that other person, if person

You thought I was: let your necrophily

Feed upon that carcase. They will not go.

M
ARY
.
Harry! There is no one here.

[
She
goes
to
the
window
and
pulls
the
curtains
across
]

H
ARRY
.
They were here, I tell you. They are here.

Are you so imperceptive, have you such dull senses

That you could not see them? If I had realised

That you were so obtuse, I would not have listened

To your nonsense. Can’t you help me?

You’re of no use to me. I must face them.

I must fight them. But they are stupid.

How can one fight with stupidity?

Yet I must speak to them.

[
He
rushes
forward
and
tears
apart
the
curtains:
but
the
embrasure
is
empty.
]

M
ARY
.
                                   Oh, Harry!

V
IOLET
.
Good evening, Mary: aren’t you dressed yet?

How do you think that Harry is looking?

Why, who could have pulled those curtains apart?

[
Pulls
them
together
]

Very well, I think, after such a long journey;

You know what a rush he had to be here in time

For his mother’s birthday.

I
VY
.
                                        Mary, my dear,

Did you arrange these flowers? Just let me change them.

You don’t mind, do you? I know so much about flowers;

Flowers have always been my passion.

You know I had my own garden once, in Cornwall,

When I could afford a garden; and I took several prizes

With my delphiniums. I was rather an authority.

G
ERALD
.
Good evening, Mary. You’ve seen Harry, I see.

It’s good to have him back again, isn’t it?

We must make him feel at home. And most auspicious

That he could be here for his mother’s birthday.

M
ARY
.
I must go and change. I came in very late.

[
Exit
]

C
HARLES
.
Now we only want Arthur and John

I’m glad that you’ll all be together, Harry;

They need the influence of their elder brother.

Arthur’s a bit irresponsible, you know;

You should have a sobering effect upon him.

After all, you’re the head of the family.

A
MY’S
V
OICE
.
Violet! Has Arthur or John come yet?

V
IOLET
.
Neither of them is here yet, Amy.

[
Enter
A
MY
,
with
D
R
. W
ARBURTON
]

A
MY
.
It is most vexing. What can have happened?

I suppose it’s the fog that is holding them up,

So it’s no use to telephone anywhere. Harry!

Haven’t you seen Dr. Warburton?

You know he’s the oldest friend of the family,

And he’s known you longer than anybody, Harry.

When he heard that you were going to be here for dinner

He broke an important engagement to come.

W
ARBURTON
.
I dare say we’ve both changed a good deal, Harry.

A country practitioner doesn’t get younger.

It takes me back longer than you can remember

To see you again. But you can’t have forgotten

The day when you came back from school with measles

And we had such a time to keep you in bed.

You didn’t like being ill in the holidays.

I
VY
.
It
was
unpleasant, coming home to have an illness.

V
IOLET
.
It was always the same with your minor ailments

And children’s epidemics: you would never stay in bed

Because you were convinced that you would never get well.

H
ARRY
.
Not, I think, without some justification:

For what you call restoration to health

Is only incubation of another malady.

W
ARBURTON
.
You mustn’t take such a pessimistic view

Which is hardly complimentary to my profession.

But I remember, when I was a student at Cambridge,

I used to dream of making some great discovery

To do away with one disease or another.

Now I’ve had forty years’ experience

I’ve left off thinking in terms of the laboratory.

We’re all of us ill in one way or another:

We call it health when we find no symptom

Of illness. Health is a relative term.

I
VY
.
You must have had a very rich experience, Doctor,

In forty years.

W
ARBURTON
.
      Indeed, yes.

Even in a country practice. My first patient, now —

You wouldn’t believe it, ladies — was a murderer,

Who suffered from an incurable cancer.

How he fought against it! I never saw a man

More anxious to live.

H
ARRY
.
                         Not at all extraordinary.

It is really harder to believe in murder

Than to believe in cancer. Cancer is here:

The lump, the dull pain, the occasional sickness:

Murder a reversal of sleep and waking.

Murder was there. Your ordinary murderer

Regards himself as an innocent victim.

To himself he is still what he used to be

Or what he would be. He cannot realise

That everything is irrevocable,

The past unredeemable. But cancer, now,

That is something real.

W
ARBURTON
.
                     Well, let’s not talk of such matters.

How did we get onto the subject of cancer?

I really don’t know. — But now you’re all grown up

I haven’t a patient left at Wishwood.

Wishwood was always a cold place, but healthy.

It’s only when I get an invitation to dinner

That I ever see your mother.

V
IOLET
.
                                      Yes, look at your mother!

Except that she can’t get about now in winter

You wouldn’t think that she was a day older

Than on her birthday ten years ago.

G
ERALD
.
Is there any use in waiting for Arthur and John?

A
MY
.
We might as well go in to dinner.

They may come before we finish. Will you take me in, Doctor?

I think we are very much the oldest present —

In fact we are the oldest inhabitants.

As we came first, we will go first, in to dinner.

W
ARBURTON
.
With pleasure, Lady Monchensey,

And I hope that next year will bring me the same honour.

[
Exeunt
A
MY
, D
R
. W
ARBURTON
, H
ARRY
]

C
HORUS
.
I am afraid of all that has happened, and of all that is to come;

Of the things to come that sit at the door, as if they had been there always.

And the past is about to happen, and the future was long since settled.

And the wings of the future darken the past, the beak and claws have desecrated

History. Shamed

The first cry in the bedroom, the noise in the nursery, mutilated

The family album, rendered ludicrous

The tenants’ dinner, the family picnic on the moors. Have torn

The roof from the house, or perhaps it was never there.

And the bird sits on the broken chimney. I am afraid.

I
VY
.
This is a most undignified terror, and I must struggle against it.

G
ERALD
.
I am used to tangible danger, but only to what I can understand.

V
IOLET
.
It is the obtuseness of Gerald and Charles and that doctor, that gets on my nerves.

C
HARLES
.
If the matter were left in my hands, I think I could manage the situation.

[
Exeunt
]

[
Enter
M
ARY
,
and
passes
through
to
dinner.
Enter
A
GATHA
]

A
GATHA
.
The eye is on this house

The eye covers it

There are three together

May the three be separated

May the knot that was tied

Become unknotted

May the crossed bones

In the filled-up well

Be at last straightened

May the weasel and the otter

Be about their proper business

The eye of the day time

And the eye of the night time

Be diverted from this house

Till the knot is unknotted

The crossed is uncrossed

And the crooked is made straight.

[
Exit
to
dinner
]

END OF PART
I