I suppose I shall get used to it.
JOANNA. I could forgive anybody anything to-night. (Candidly.) It is so lovely not to be married to you, Jack.
PURDIE (spiritless). I can understand that. I do feel small.
JOANNA (the true friend). You will soon swell up again.
PURDIE (for whom, alas, we need not weep). That is the appalling thing. But at present, at any rate, I am a rag at your feet, Joanna--no, at yours, Mabel. Are you going to pick me up? I don't advise it.
MABEL. I don't know whether I want to, Jack. To begin with, which of us is it your lonely soul is in search of?
JOANNA. Which of us is the fluid one, or the fluider one?
MABEL. Are you and I one? Or are you and Joanna one? Or are the three of us two?
JOANNA. He wants you to whisper in his ear, Mabel, the entrancing poem, 'Mabel Purdie.' Do it, Jack; there will be nothing wrong in it now.
PURDIE. Rub it in.
MABEL. When I meet Joanna's successor--
PURDIE (quailing). No, no, Mabel none of that. At least credit me with having my eyes open at last. There will be no more of this. I swear it by all that is--
JOANNA (in her excellent imitation of a sheep). Baa-a, he is off again.
PURDIE. Oh Lord, so I am.
MABEL. Don't, Joanna.
PURDIE (his mind still illumined). She is quite right--I was. In my present state of depression--which won't last--I feel there is something in me that will make me go on being the same ass, however many chances I get. I haven't the stuff in me to take warning. My whole being is corroded. Shakespeare knew what he was talking about--'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.'
JOANNA. For 'dear Brutus' we are to read 'dear audience' I suppose?
PURDIE. You have it.
JOANNA. Meaning that we have the power to shape ourselves?
PURDIE. We have the power right enough.
JOANNA. But isn't that rather splendid?
PURDIE. For those who have the grit in them, yes. (Still seeing with a strange clearness through the chink the hammer has made.) And they are not the dismal chappies; they are the ones with the thin bright faces. (He sits lugubriously by his wife and is sorry for the first time that she has not married a better man.) I am afraid there is not much fight in me, Mabel, but we shall see. If you catch me at it again, have the goodness to whisper to me in passing, 'Lob's Wood.' That may cure me for the time being.
MABEL (still certain that she loved him once but not so sure why.) Perhaps I will . . . as long as I care to bother, Jack. It depends on you how long that is to be.
JOANNA (to break an awkward pause). I feel that there is hope in that as well as a warning. Perhaps the wood may prove to have been useful after all. (This brighter view of the situation meets with no immediate response. With her next suggestion she reaches harbour.) You know, we are not people worth being sorrowful about--so let us laugh.
(The ladies succeed in laughing though not prettily, but the man has been too much shaken.)
JOANNA (in the middle of her laugh). We have forgotten the others! I wonder what is happening to them?
PURDIE (reviving). Yes, what about them? Have they changed!
MABEL. I didn't see any of them in the wood.
JOANNA. Perhaps we did see them without knowing them; we didn't know Lob.
PURDIE (daunted). That's true.
JOANNA. Won't it be delicious to be here to watch them when they come back, and see them waking up--or whatever it was we did.
PURDIE. What was it we did? I think something tapped me on the forehead.
MABEL (blanching). How do we know the others will come back?
JOANNA (infected). We don't know. How awful!
MABEL. Listen!
PURDIE. I distinctly hear some one on the stairs.
MABEL. It will be Matey.
PURDIE (the chink beginning to close). Be cautious both of you; don't tell him we have had any . . . odd experiences.
(It is, however, MRS. COADE who comes downstairs in a dressing-gown and carrying a candle and her husband's muffler.)
MRS. COADE. So you are back at last. A nice house, I must say.