ACT III
Lob's room has gone very dark as it sits up awaiting the possible return of the adventurers. The curtains are drawn, so that no light comes from outside. There is a tapping on the window, and anon two intruders are stealing about the floor, with muffled cries when they meet unexpectedly. They find the switch and are revealed as Purdie and his Mabel. Something has happened to them as they emerged from the wood, but it is so superficial that neither notices it: they are again in the evening dress in which they had left the house. But they are still being led by that strange humour of the blood.
MABEL (looking around her curiously). A pretty little room; I wonder who is the owner?
PURDIE. It doesn't matter; the great thing is that we have escaped Joanna.
MABEL. Jack, look, a man!
(The term may not be happily chosen, but the person indicated is Lob curled up on his chair by a dead fire. The last look on his face before he fell asleep having been a leery one it is still there.)
PURDIE. He is asleep.
MABEL. Do you know him?
PURDIE. Not I. Excuse me, sir, Hi! (No shaking, however, wakens the sleeper.)
MABEL. Darling, how extraordinary.
PURDIE (always considerate). After all, precious, have we any right to wake up a stranger, just to tell him that we are runaways hiding in his house?
MABEL (who comes of a good family). I think he would expect it of us.
PURDIE (after trying again). There is no budging him.
MABEL (appeased). At any rate, we have done the civil thing.
(She has now time to regard the room more attentively, including the tray of coffee cups which MATEY had left on the table in a not unimportant moment of his history.) There have evidently been people here, but they haven't drunk their coffee. Ugh! cold as a deserted egg in a bird's nest. Jack, if you were a clever detective you could construct those people out of their neglected coffee cups. I wonder who they are and what has spirited them away?
PURDIE. Perhaps they have only gone to bed. Ought we to knock them up?
MABEL (after considering what her mother would have done). I think not, dear. I suppose we have run away, Jack--meaning to?
PURDIE (with the sturdiness that weaker vessels adore). Irrevocably. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime . . . (He becomes conscious that something has happened to LOB'S leer. It has not left his face but it has shifted.) He is not shamming, do you think?
MABEL. Shake him again.
PURDIE (after shaking him). It's all right. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime . . .
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?
JOANNA (dashing away a tear). Please to address me as Mrs. Purdie, madam. (She sees LOB.) Who is this man?
PURDIE. We don't know; and there is no waking him. You can try, if you like.
(Failing to rouse him JOANNA makes a third at table. They are all a little inconsequential, as if there were still some moon-shine in their hair.)
JOANNA. You were saying something about the devotion of a lifetime; please go on.
PURDIE (diffidently). I don't like to before you, Joanna.
JOANNA (becoming coarse again). Oh, don't mind me.
PURDIE (looking like a note of interrogation). I should certainly like to say it.
MABEL (loftily). And I shall be proud to hear it.
PURDIE. I should have liked to spare you this, Joanna; you wouldn't put your hands over your ears?
JOANNA (alas). No, sir.
MABEL. Fie, Joanna. Surely a wife's natural delicacy . . .
PURDIE (severely). As you take it in that spirit, Joanna, I can proceed with a clear conscience.