THE HEATHER FIELD
AND
MAEVE
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_All Rights Reserved._
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THE HEATHER FIELD
AND
MAEVE
BY
EDWARD MARTYN
AUTHOR OF “MORGANTE THE LESSER”
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
GEORGE MOORE
[A logo, consisting of plants and fleurs-de-lis, with the motto
“DESORMAIS.”]
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
MDCCCXCIX
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I DEDICATE THESE TWO PLAYS TO
GEORGE MOORE, W. B. YEATS
AND
ARTHUR SYMONS.
E. M.
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INTRODUCTION
In the publication of the two plays in this volume are involved many
things: “Le Théâtre Libre,” its echo in England, “The Independent
Theatre,” Ibsen, Mr George Alexander, Mr William Archer, “The New
Century Theatre,” the “Irish Literary Theatre,” and the normal
intelligence of theatrical audiences in France and England. It would be
impossible--I mean that it would be impossible for me--to speak of the
plays before speaking of these contiguous matters. Therefore with your
permission....
* * * * *
It was for the purpose of acting the psychological drama, which seems to
interest no part of the public except actors and men of letters, that
the “Théâtre Libre” was founded. It had become known that many
distinguished authors, without thought of supplying a popular demand,
had written psychological plays. These remained in their desks unacted
until the “Théâtre Libre” asked permission to act them. M. Antoine, its
director, was anxious to put the taste of the public to the test, to
find out whether the public was as opposed to the literary drama as
managers seemed to think. The “Théâtre Libre” was imitated in England
under the name of the “Independent Theatre,” with this difference, that
I did not hope to discover any psychological drama in England. English
prose is mercenary, English dramatic prose is the most mercenary of all.
I did not expect to recover literary drama from the desks of our
dramatists, I knew that none was there. Before a nation can produce art
it must see art, and my hope rested on the supposition that the wealthy
would subscribe sufficient money to pay for a monthly performance of a
work of art. That this work of art should be of British origin did not
seem to me to be of immediate importance; and the money required was so
little, £2000 a year or even less, £1500, would have been ample funds
for the “Independent Theatre.” I gave up all my time and energy to the
production of the first plays produced by the “Independent Theatre.”
They created some passing literary interest, but little by little the
truth was borne in upon me that there were not 1500 people in London who
cared sufficiently for dramatic art to pay one guinea a year to save
dramatic writing from the grave into which it was slipping. Having made
sure of this fact I cut the “Independent Theatre” adrift. It has long
ceased to exist, and the “Théâtre Libre” in France has ceased to exist
too, and for the same reason.
Our dislike to good painting nearly equals our dislike to a good play,
but good painting is dependent on the good taste of a very few. The
pre-Raphaelite movement was kept alive by half-a-dozen men of taste; but
the art of the dramatist demands a more numerous patronage, and even the
little patronage necessary for the existence of an independent Theatre
was not forthcoming. The public in both countries, in France and
England, for some obscure reason, which it would be vain to attempt to
elucidate, regards any dramatic movement outside of the ordinary scheme
of the ordinary commercial theatre, not merely with the indifference
which might be expected, but with a fierce hostility which is
incomprehensible. To many this will seem an exaggeration, but many will
remember the sullen opposition to the first performance of “The Doll’s
House.” It is not too much to say that to like Ibsen’s plays in the
eighties was equivalent to liking Wagner’s music. Both were regarded
with oblique looks, and few were quite sure that the new music and the
new drama were not an immorality, which it was perhaps the duty of the
state to stamp out. Not infrequently this view found expression in the
writings of men who, on all other points, were as sane and as mediocre
as their fellows. It was not until the other day that the critic ceased
to confuse the poet philosopher with a social reformer, interested in
the liberation of women from their husbands, and in the struggle between
capital and labour. It has only just come to be suspected that perhaps
Ibsen did not write his plays to prove the necessity for reformation in
these directions.
Wagner has had his revenge; but Ibsen, though he has ceased to be
execrated, has remained unpopular; perhaps he has even lost adherents,
for, in replying to some admirers, he admitted that poetry interested
him more than social reformations.
In Ibsen are combined poet, philosopher and dramatist in almost the same
proportions as in Shakespeare, more than in Racine, Goethe or Hugo. He
is deficient only in the romantic spectacle which Shakespeare provides
in abundance. Shakespeare alone amid dramatists was able to remain a
poet for his pleasure while conceding booths and roundabouts to his
audience for theirs. But the psychological drama does not admit of
spectacle; that is why it fails on the stage. The explanation is a sad
one, for if it be true we shall never possess a popular literary drama
again. The psychological drama is the only possible literary drama in
the nineteenth century. The romantic incidents which abound in
Shakespeare were part and parcel of Elizabethan life; there was more
room in the world then; at every few miles the realities of life faded
to a romantic background. In the seventeenth century, duels,
conspiracies, serenades and poisoned goblets were common circumstances,
and could be freely used by the dramatists; they are still the
stock-in-trade of the drama of the nineteenth century; they still hold
the interest of sophisticated audiences anxious to be amused, but the
skill of no one will ever endow them with life again.... Perhaps without
laying ourselves open to the suspicion of believing that a theatrical
audience will ever be found less unintelligent than the audiences which
collect nightly in our theatres, we may wonder if this present
theatrical convention will not wear itself out as the convention of
Italian opera has worn out. The theatrical folk of fifty years hence,
possessed by a foolish notion of progress, may decide that they do not
care for scenery, dresses and romantic adventure, and welcome as a
change the psychological drama which to-day is deemed pernicious and
intolerable, even when written by the second greatest dramatic genius
this world has seen.
In this long interval the drama will exist as a pretext for actors and
actresses to dress themselves in fine clothes and to posture for the
mild distraction of a public that has eaten itself into a stupor. But
should a revolution in taste come to pass, will it endure? The public is
the original jungle, and the garden that has been won from the jungle
very soon returns to the jungle. A better chance is that some man may
awake to the idea that there are others to endow hospitals and that it
is his mission to endow a theatre. Until then those who write plays from
impulse, because they have something to say, must publish their plays in
book form. Appeal may be made to the vanity of the actor-manager and his
wife; the vanity of the actor and actress is a gleam of hope in a dark
outlook, a fugitive gleam.
* * * * *
“I have brought to you a play, Alexander, in which there is a real live
man, one just born into literary life--he has never been seen on the
stage--no, he is not out of a novel. But,” I added, seeing his face
brighten too rapidly, “there is not a penny of money in the play. It is
merely a good part.”
“Is it then so well written that----”
“The fault lies deeper than the writing. The public will tolerate good
writing, but what it will not tolerate is, that a play should be built
on a solid base of human idea and emotion, etc.... If the play be
frivolous in its conception, the public will tolerate artifices of
language.”
* * * * *
Mr Alexander read the play and promised to produce it at a morning
performance, and that he did not fulfil his promise is no part of my
present grievance. A broken promise were a pitiful thing to lament. It
would be no wiser to reproach Mr Alexander for having produced plays out
of whose inanities he has made a fortune. He did well to produce these
plays, for nine-tenths of an actor’s life must be given up to rubbish;
rubbish is the fare of the multitude, and it is the multitude that
enables the actor to keep the roof over his head; but he should reserve
a tenth part of his life for himself--for his art. All actors try to do
this, for actors love their art; they talk about it incessantly and
never about their salaries; in this respect their attitude towards their
art compares very favourably with that of authors towards theirs. (When
I say authors, I of course mean the members of the Society of Authors.)
No one recognises the human emotions and no one welcomes them in a play
more than actors, and if it were their taste that obtained, Ibsen would
be the most popular dramatist. The taste of actors in plays is identical
with that of the “Independent Theatre,” but it is the taste of the
public that obtains, and so Sardou and Cyrano de Bergerac, which is
merely rhymed Sardou, are hoisted above Ibsen. The vanity of the actor
impels him toward art; for six months, for ten months of the year he is
forced to inhale and exhale nonsense, on the eleventh he longs to rush
out of the confined and vitiated atmosphere of the theatre into the open
air of art; his tired lungs pant for a breath of human emotion; and this
is the moment when the dramatic author should get him to sign an
agreement to produce his play. It was in such a revulsion of feeling
that Mr Alexander was caught, and if he broke his promise after having
made it to me, it was the fault of the dramatic critics. I will name the
principal delinquent, Mr Archer, and explain.
True it is that he and I are moved by the same desire to see literature
on the stage; he has given up his life, I gave up some months, perhaps a
year of my life, to attain this object. I retired from the struggle, he
has persisted. Our taste in dramatic literature often coincided; our
admiration of Ibsen is the same, but though our eyes were set on the
same goal, the ways by which we hoped to reach that goal were different
ways. My belief was that the most likely way of arriving at the goal was
by an uncompromising sincerity, by taking no heed of vain appearance, by
going to the root of things and denouncing all pseudo-literature in the
rudest possible terms. For plays like the “Circus Girl” and “Charlie’s
Aunt” much toleration should be shown, but the pseudo-literature play
should be held up to contempt. Mr Archer’s belief was that the goal
could be reached by encouraging, with insincere praise, all work that
seemed new, every play that seemed better than the last play; his
attitude towards dramatic writing has therefore been one of benevolent
insincerity. He has pursued this policy for twenty years, and he has
only to hear the plays now running at the London theatres to be
convinced that he has not “educated” the public taste.
Like another he probably once believed that he had not lived in vain.
The night of the production of “The Second Mrs Tanqueray” his hopes
stood higher than they ever did before or since. Some years have passed,
the circumstances which engendered the play are scattered, we can see it
in its relation to literature and measure it by its humanities. It must
be now plain to every one that it was no more than a dramatic version of
the current gossip of the street. Folk were then talking of women with
pasts: were asking what a man should do if he married a woman who told
him that she had had a lover before she was married, and then what a man
should do if he found out that his wife had had a lover before her
marriage, and so on. The most astonishingly ill-devised tales were
concocted by our dramatists on these themes. Mr Alexander, who likes
betting on the taste of the public, produced one with success; and in
the same spirit he bet on the taste of the public with a very horrible
play called “The Conquerors”--and lost. But Mr Archer mistook “The
Second Mrs Tanqueray” for a work of art, he declared it to be a play of
the deepest social and literary significance, and the beginning of a
dramatic renaissance. The actor-manager’s conscience or his vanity was
appeased; he was convinced against his better judgment that he had
ceased to talk nonsense on the stage; he believed that he was engaged in
earnest work, etc.; why, therefore, should he produce “The Heather
Field”? I had admitted that I did not think it would draw money, he was
agreed with me on that point; as for art, why speak of it? Had he not
fulfilled his artistic destiny by producing “The Second Mrs Tanqueray”?
Actors are better judges of literature than is generally supposed, their
love of the humanities from which they are for ever debarred leads them
aright, but bewildered by the press, Mr Alexander for a moment seems to
have thought that perhaps, after all, there was a little money in
literature, and hearing that Mr Henry James had written some plays he
applied for one. I would not be discourteous to Mr Henry James; perhaps
the worst discourtesy would be to refrain from saying exactly what I
think of his play. Speak of it I must--the explanation on which I am
engaged obliges me to speak of it; and what it is needful that I should
say about “Guy Domville” he knows already. He knows that it was not
vulgar, like “The Second Mrs Tanqueray,” but a mere hapless effort to
speak in a language which he had not yet moulded to his lips. The
knowledge that what he wrote was going to be spoken and not read seemed
to have paralyzed his thoughts, until in the third act he could not
express himself at all. In the first act some design was recognisable,
but in the second and third acts everything that makes life, instinct,
desire and reason, was swallowed up in flat fog. The incomparable
Tourgueneff underwent the same kind of aberration when he wrote his
five-act comedy, and his failure was in the same direction as Mr
James’s. But instead of such simple truth every kind, almost every kind,
of insincerity filled the newspapers. About the construction of the
story some doubt was expressed, but the writing of it could not be
sufficiently praised. Did the critics look into their hearts to discover
what they really thought of the writing of the play or did they say it
was well written because Mr James wrote it? They were impressed by the
sentences, which were elaborately composed and wore a thoughtful air.
Alas, current criticism cannot understand that to think well is to write
well, that an idea which has been conceived in hesitation and fear must
of necessity be badly written. If the critics had looked into their
hearts, if they had striven to discover their real thoughts from
floating masses of preconceived opinion, they must have learnt that the
play for different reasons, but for equally valid reasons, was no nearer
to literature than any drama by Mr George R. Sims. Few read dramatic
criticism, and it is forgotten as soon as the page on which it appears
is passed. Dramatic criticism is as ephemeral as a fashion article;
successful plays are but fashions; but even about fashions the critic is
behoven to write truthfully. We may not answer, ‘what matter whether
women wear one kind of sleeve or another?’ Every lie matters, and the
attitude of benevolent insincerity which the critics assumed towards Mr
James’s play produced its little effect in the subconscious mind of Mr
Alexander and in the general mind, which is always subconscious. The
critical articles which condoned instead of condemning induced a feeling
of resentment against literature, a feeling that may be interpreted in
the following words: “So that is literature! you all say it is, ...
well, literature does not do on the stage.”
The next attempt to foster the literary play was made by a new Society
constituted probably after the fashion of the “Independent Theatre”
Society. It was called the “New Century Theatre,” and the first play
that the new dramatic society produced was Ibsen’s “John Gabriel
Borkman.”
To produce Ibsen was so obviously the right thing to do that the wisdom
of the management does not transpire in the choice any more than the
wisdom of the captain of a man-of-war transpires when he fires a salute
to the Queen. To judge the wisdom of the new management we must look to
its second rather than to its first production, and the second play that
the New Century Theatre produced was a sort of sea captain’s yarn of
robbery and murder, written in a language compiled very carefully from
the Bible and Scotch idiom. That Mr Archer, the admirer of “The Second
Mrs Tanqueray” and “Guy Domville” should mistake this piece of ingenious
tinkering for a work of original genius seems natural enough if we
consider how his taste oscillates between love of an exhibition of some
social problem on one side and literary writing on the other. The
difficulty is not to understand why he should like the three above
mentioned plays, but why he should also like the “Master Builder.” For
Catholicity in art consists in admiring such different things as the
sculpture of the Parthenon and that of Chartres Cathedral; but if a
third admiration--let us say a picture by Sir Edward Burne Jones--be
introduced, we are forced to conclude that the critic has not understood
either the first or the second.
The management of the New Century Theatre was in the hands of Mr Archer,
Mr Massingham, and Miss Robins; and not only did they choose a
sea-captain’s yarn for their second production, but they still further
exposed the feebleness of their taste by selecting a one-act play to
precede it, whose feebleness ranged beyond those wide bounds marked out
for feebleness to range in by unpretentious suburban managements.
Mr Archer and Mr Massingham are critics of the drama. They advocate
Wagner theatres and subsidised theatres, so I will say to them that it
would be well to have a subsidised theatre if we had a man with a
sufficiently definite taste to conduct it; a man who could admire the
Parthenon and Chartres Cathedral, but who did not dally with Mr Leader
or his Associate Jones. Antoine was such a man, and Mr Archer did seem
once like the man who could successfully direct a literary theatre. But
he likes so many things; his taste is so varied that he may be said to
have no taste. He admires another Jones and praises “Michael and his
Lost Angel.” “The Second Mrs Tanqueray” induced him to believe that we
were on the eve of a dramatic renaissance. The variations in Mr Archer’s
tastes are so unexpected that he has become for me what the game of
“Patience” is for others. In lonely evenings it is always a distraction
to try to penetrate to the secret of his nature, to discover why he
likes “Hedder Gabler” and “The Benefit of the Doubt.” We all play the
game of “Patience” in some form or other, and the reconcilement of an
admiration for “The Benefit of the Doubt” with any considerable
intelligence is the problem I often set myself. And sometimes I think
that it may be explained by the antagonism of the Puritan Mr Archer to
the playgoer Mr Archer; the Puritan demanded atonement from the
playgoer, and the atonement that the Scotch ancestor demanded was the
sacrifice of all personal vanity; so Mr Archer became a dramatic critic.
But the original ancestor demanded further sacrifice; and Mr Archer
renounced original work and accepted the hard fare of translation. But
outraged Nature has reasserted herself in Mr Archer’s sub-conscious
mind. He says, ‘I lay no egg but I think I might hatch one.’ Of all
objects in Nature none is perhaps more pathetic than a clucking hen, and
when the last chicken was hatched out I consented to go and see it. “He
really has begun to think,” said the anxious parent. “But,” I said, “the
thinking chicken does not begin to think, he begins by thinking.”
The play was the unfortunate “Benefit of the Doubt,” and the divorce
court has always been accepted by Mr Archer as the symbol of
thoughtfulness.... There is no reason why the hapless tale should be
unfolded here; it matters little whether the wife confessed or the
husband found her out; suffice it to say that Mr Pinero, who is about as
subjective as a clown, soon began to wander round the dramatic ring hoop
in hand. All the usual hoops were jumped in the second act, overheard
conversations and the rest; but not one of his characters could he get
through the psychological hoop; round and round they went, missing it
time out of mind. The poor jester stood in the middle of the third act,
a psychological and a theological hoop in either hand, tired out, the
horses at walking pace, the ladies swinging limp on their wide saddles.
It was eleven o’clock! There was nothing for it but to call a bishop
down from the gallery to pull the performance through somehow. There
were a bishop in the play and a young man called Claude, and these were
the folk who did not satisfy Mr Archer. The bishop after all did bring
the play to a conclusion, and Claude seemed to me one of the most
amusing creations of the greatest creator of comic characters since
Dickens.
No one discovered the moral of this play; perhaps it had none, but the
moral of the articles that were written about it was clear enough. Again
the press endeavoured to deceive the public. Mr Pinero had been put
forward as a thinker; the play was rigmarole, but to admit that it was
rigmarole would be to compromise for ever the literary drama. So Mr
Archer thought; whereas it is by supporting such plays that the press
compromises the chances of the literary drama. “Again,” the public said,
in its dim sub-conscious way, “if that is literature I do not like
literature.” And since the failure of that most dismal play indifference
has settled over things theatrical: farce and melodrama and musical
comedy are everywhere.
* * * * *
I have to reproach Mr Archer with sins of omission as well as with sins
of commission. For while he was defending the indefensible and
exhausting the patience of the public with a tale of the sea, there was
published unbeknown to him in London a play, beautiful as anything in
Maeterlinck, a play possessing all the beauties of the Princess Maleine,
and the beauty of verses equal to the verses of Homer. The name of this
play is the “Countess Cathleen,” and the name of its author is W. B.
Yeats. If I had mentioned the name of a certain popular writer of
military jargon our silly literary press would bubble with enjoyment,
but the genius of W. B. Yeats, being a survival of that of the prophet
and the seer of old time, escapes the appreciation of the newspapers.
That those who find the natural outlet of their lives in Newmarket and
the Riviera should not have read the “Countess Cathleen” is
comprehensible enough; but that those whose life’s business would seem
to be to understand art, should read the “Countess Cathleen” and prefer
“Admiral Guinea” and “The Benefit of the Doubt,” is surely a sign of the
degrading influence of newspaper criticism upon those who write it. Or
shall we hazard a conjecture? Shall we say that Mr Archer has not spoken
or written about this play because the English reviews are only open to
chatter about the doings of little Belgians and Frenchmen? The
bi-monthly article about a French poet is one of the literary
conventions of our day. But even if we accept this convention as a
sufficient explanation for Mr Archer’s silence regarding the “Countess
Cathleen,” the choice of the New Century Theatre for its second
production still remains unexplained. The beauty of the verses and the
perfection of the construction of this play will be admitted by Mr
Archer; it will be on the character drawing that he will sharpen his
pen.... But do we not hear too much of the differentiation of one man
from another? Is not character drawing a mere rind of life in which the
English novel is still seeking an existence? And without being thought
to say that it were well to ignore social differences, may it not be
suggested that they are worthy of no more than a passing notice?
Temperamental differences are more important, but even they are but the
threshold of the deep regions of humanity--those states of eternal
consciousness which are souls in a far deeper sense than we are souls.
When the critic has said, as he says too frequently, “I do not see your
hero, I do not see your heroine,” he has not said everything; he has not
uttered, as he thinks he has, the final reproof. What we see most
clearly is not always most real, another and a more abiding reality
exists in our immortal instincts. The Countess Cathleen being a creature
of myth, and stripped of all circumstantial habit, is visible only to
the eyes of the soul, and represents only that which is most human and
eternal in man.... She would barter her soul to gain the salvation of
those who are selling their souls for food in famine time. But this
compact is an impossible compact; we barter our souls only for selfish
gratification; and it was the genius of the primitive poem to imagine
such paradoxical sacrifice, in order to represent the blindness of human
pity. A fixed idea like the Countess Cathleen looks neither to the right
nor left; she walks straight for the chasm, but instead of falling she
ascends an angel to heaven, her intention being pure.
It was open to Mr Archer, Miss Robins and Mr Massingham to have produced
this divine play; or if they had wanted a prose play they might have
produced “The Heather Field,” which will now be performed by the Irish
Literary Theatre on alternate nights with Mr Yeats’ play.... I sent “The
Heather Field” to Mr Archer, but he did not see as much as Mr Alexander
saw in it, nor did discussion help him to understand that it was the
first play written in English inspired by the examples of Ibsen. He
seemed still involved in the traditional comprehension of Ibsen which
discerns a social reformer in the greatest dramatic poet and thinker
since Shakespeare, or maybe it was the man who paints from life,
straight away, without troubling himself about symbolism, that Mr Archer
saw in Ibsen at that time. He said, speaking of “The Heather Field” and
“The Benefit of the Doubt,” that it was open to me to prefer a piece of
rude original sculpture to a piece of academic work. It is not required
that I should raise the question whether academic work expresses
qualities of balance, design, sequence. However this may be, it is
certain that these qualities are as conspicuously present in “The
Heather Field” as they are conspicuously absent from “The Benefit of the
Doubt.” A play that possesses qualities of balance, design, sequence is
a work of art and will hold its own in any company; and although “The
Heather Field” will seem small by the side of “The Wild Duck,” it will
hold its own by the side of “The Wild Duck,” or “Macbeth,” or “Hamlet,”
just as a housewife by Peter de Hoogh will hold its own by the side of
the “Marriage Feast” by Veronese, or the “Entombment of Christ” by
Titian, or the “Last Judgment” by Michael Angelo. The little story
entitled “Ships that Pass in the Night” is not lofty in conception nor
very profound, but it is wistful and true, and it therefore holds its
own by the side of “Don Quixote,” “On the Eve,” and “l’Education
Sentimentale.” A picture or poem that does not hold its own by the side
of the greatest works is not worthy of consideration, is not art. Art is
full of differences of style which seem to amount to contradictions, but
art is always the same, and the true critic is he who is not deceived by
the superficial appearance. But the mission of the journalist is to
record appearances.... I think that in these last lines I have made
something clear that was not clear before, and it is not impossible that
many will understand now why “The Second Mrs Tanqueray” stands beyond
the pale, not being of the right flesh and blood, while “The Heather
Field” stands well within the pale. I apologise for the words “well
within,” they are unnecessary; there is no border-land: picture, poem,
statue, novel, sonata, should enter instantly by right of birth or be
thrust outside like hirelings.
M. Jules Lemaître has published several volumes of criticism, and so far
as I remember without failing to distinguish between the sheep and the
goats. But Mr Archer is never sure which is which, and his sins of
commission are only to be paralleled by his sins of omission. He failed
to perceive that the hero of “The Heather Field,” Carden Tyrrell, is the
first appearance of humanity in the English prose drama of to-day--of
the eternal instinctive humanities and not the ephemeral differences
which divide the grocer from the baronet. It were surely impossible to
point to a scene in the English prose drama of the present century so
essentially human as the scene in which Carden Tyrrell speaks to his
brother Miles of the days when they sailed their skiff to Lorlei, and
Carden, who is the elder brother, tells Miles, who was then a boy, the
legends of the Rhine. This scene is certainly a beautiful and pathetic
expression of that passionate wistfulness which rises up in the heart
and brain when we look back on the days of our early youth, those days
fresh and fugitive as the days of early spring, when the buds are
breaking into tiny leaf and the daffodils star the grass. In a moment we
are in the midst of the emotion which Mr Martyn has expressed in this
scene, an emotion known to all over thirty, to the hind as well as the
king. Expression of it has hitherto been sought by bringing together an
elderly spinster and an elderly bachelor who did not marry, and who fear
that it is now too late, the assumption being that if they had married
they would have been happy. But Mr Martyn probes deeper than the
ephemeral griefs which circumstances create, and in the scene between
Carden Tyrrell and Miles Tyrrell we are face to face with that primal
melancholy which is at the root of human existence, we look into its
eyes, infinite as the sky, and are absorbed in pity for all things that
live, and we feel in our soul the truth that man was not intended to be
happy. This scene occurs again at the close of the third act; in a
modified form, it brings the play to its conclusion. Carden Tyrrell is a
man whose dreams are in conflict with reality. He might have lived in
some quiet library or some dim museum, happy in antiquarian research,
but attracted by her beauty he marries a narrow-minded conventional
woman of the world, and his dreams, instead of being expended in art,
turn to the reclamation of the Heather Field. Mortgage after mortgage is
placed upon the property, and the future of his wife and child is
compromised. The play resolves itself into a duel between husband and
wife, and one of its merits is that although all right and good sense
are on the wife’s side, the sympathy is always with Carden. We forget
the ruin he is bringing on his family, and we love him for his dreams,
for his dreams are the eternal aspiration of man for the ideal. He hears
voices, magical voices on the mountain side, and in his heart the sound
of a silver harp string.
The Heather Field is the symbol of his incurable nature; whatever its
circumstances it will seek its destiny out and find it; and with the
flowering of the Heather Field Carden passes quietly over the
border-land. The years, with all their hideous realities fall behind
him, wife, domestic misfortunes and middle age, all that has been done
becomes undone; his wife becomes Miss Desmond; his little son Kit
becomes his brother Miles; Carden is young again and he babbles of the
rainbow, of the Rhine, the gold of the Rhine and its legends; he attains
his lost youth, the soft scent and colour of the spring mornings, the
green leaf and the meadow starred with daffodils. “It is always morning
now for me,” he exclaims. The others watch him baffled and unhappy, they
are still involved in the cruel coil of reality which he has shaken off,
and he leads the child to see the rainbow, “that mystic highway of man’s
speechless longings.”
Carden Tyrrell will appear to the superficial reader merely as a man who
lives in a state of chronic misunderstanding with his wife, and
squanders his fortune in experiments for the reclamation of waste land;
and in Maeve the superficial reader will perceive a young lady who finds
herself unable to marry the man she has promised to marry, and who is
rescued from her dilemma by Queen Maeve who rises from the great cairn,
and accompanied by her harpers and warriors, carries the young girl away
to Tir-nan-ogue. But the discerning reader will at once understand that
notwithstanding much apparent dissimilarity of subject the two plays are
but different expressions of the same thought, and the power to re-tell
the same story in a different form he will recognise as the sign of the
true artist. The idea of both plays is that silvery beauty which
survives in the human heart, which we see shimmering to the horizon,
leading our longings beyond the world, and we hear it in our hearts like
silver harp strings, sounding seemingly of themselves, for no hand is
by. The morning light, the hoar frost, the moonlight wandering among the
mountains are the natural symbols of this divine beauty. Therefore Maeve
is made of moonlight and hoar frost and light of morning. We do not
discover her among our acquaintances, but everyone discovers her when he
wills to do so in his own heart. Maeve is a character evolved out of a
place; she is made out of the light of the keen bright Irish spring and
the loneliness of the Clare mountains that surround her home, of the
round tower, the masterwork of Goban, on which she gazes with intense
eyes; of the legends of the ancient Irish gods, of the beauty of the
Irish romanesque ornament, those exquisite traceries which are a
reflection of the Byzantine, but more refined. Maeve is the spirit and
sense of an ill-fated race, and she portrays its destiny and bears the
still unextinguished light of its heroic period. Maeve is all ecstasy,
tremulous white ecstasy, cold as ice and glittering like ice in the
moonlight. She looks beyond the world for her love; she is haunted by
the herolepsy of the plume and the spear of the warrior, and sees her
lover the chiefest among the chieftains of Queen Maeve. Maeve’s love is
a cerebral erithism which shrinks from all contact or even thought of
the contact of flesh. But this severance of her temperament from the
strange fruition of all our holy and most tender aspirations does not
alienate our sympathy from her. Although shorn of all common humanity,
our sympathy is with her as it is with Carden Tyrrell, and we cry,
“Believe in your warrior of long ago, and let go by you the young
Englishman who seeks to rob you of your dream;” and to triumph thus over
common instincts and infect the reader with sympathies and longing which
lie beyond the world is surely to succeed where hitherto no modern
English dramatist has even dreamed that drama was to be found.
* * * * *
These plays are perfectly constructed; they could be acted as they are
written, without curtailment; they were composed with strict regard for
the stage, though perhaps not with a view to representation on the
stage. Mr Martyn was not innocent enough to think that plays in which
human emotion is the whole of the play, would be tolerated in a theatre
of the present day. He wrote them with strict regard for the stage,
because it is impossible to write good plays without the actors and the
actresses who will never interpret them, always before your eyes. It is
as impossible to compose literary plays that do not act as it is to
compose sonnets in fifteen lines; but by some strange irony it has come
to pass that the plays which lend themselves to interpretation are the
plays which are neglected on the stage and cherished in the study.
GEORGE MOORE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HEATHER FIELD
A PLAY IN THREE ACTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
BARRY USSHER, _a landowner, student, philosopher, &c._
LORD SHRULE, _a neighbouring landowner_.
LADY SHRULE (LILIAN), _his wife_.
CARDEN TYRRELL.
MRS GRACE TYRRELL (_born_ DESMOND), _his wife_.
KIT, _their son, nine years old_.
MILES TYRRELL, _scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, and brother
of Carden_.
DOCTOR DOWLING, }
} _physicians_.
DOCTOR ROCHE, }
_The action takes place about the year 1890 in CARDEN TYRRELL’S house
on the West coast of Ireland._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACT I
SCENE:--CARDEN TYRREL’S library. On the right a door leads to the
dining-room and rest of house. On the left is a large empty fire-place.
At back through open glass folding-doors a small garden is visible,
below which the Atlantic Ocean, flanked by a mountain at left, stretches
out to the horizon. Between fire-place and folding-doors stands a
writing-table with chairs on either side. At the opposite part of the
room near folding-doors is a large sofa. Books in shelves line all
walls. In front at the right is another table covered with papers,
magazines, &c., which are likewise thrown negligently over other chairs
in the room. It is a bright forenoon in the Autumn.
MILES TYRRELL, a young light-haired man of about nineteen, dressed in a
blue serge suit, is seated at the writing-table in deep study with
several books around him. After a pause he looks up wearily, then again
bends over his books.
BARRY USSHER, a lean man of about two and thirty, of medium height, with
dark hair, a short pointed beard, and dressed in a riding-costume of
sombre grey, enters from garden at back.
MILES (_starting_). Ah, Barry.
USSHER (_throwing his hat and hunting-whip on the sofa_). Hallo, Miles,
good morning. I see you are determined to win that gold medal at
Trinity--and become one day Lord Chancellor of Ireland too, I’ll be
bound.
MIL. (_with a faint smile_). Lord Chancellor, indeed! I shall be lucky
if I can pass my examination and then find just so many briefs as will
afford me a living.
USS. Why are you so despondent? You have ability.
MIL. Perhaps--if there was an opportunity of displaying it. Oh, this is
no place for work.
USS. I know what you mean. But why not study in your room upstairs?
MIL. I might do that. Still it is not so much the interruptions. It is
the knowledge of what goes on, perpetually.
USS. Are things as bad as ever?
MIL. Yes--my brother and his wife cannot agree.
USS. How sad it is.
MIL. Oh, if only I had a quiet house to study in like yours. You live
there like a sage absorbed in your books and ideas.
USS. I fear I also find difficulties in cultivating the tastes that are
congenial to me.
MIL. Why?
USS. You see, Miles, an unfortunate landowner must devote all his
attention to keeping a little of his belongings together in these bad
times.
MIL. As if you were affected by bad times--you, with that fine place
here joining us, and with your unencumbered estate, and no one depending
upon you. You’re a lucky fellow. No wonder the luck of Barry Ussher is a
by-word with the country people.
USS. They know nothing about it.
MIL. Well, in any case you seem able to live as you please. You have
always means to travel, and never want for anything.
USS. So that is your idea of luck, Miles?
MIL. Well, somewhat I fancy. Isn’t it yours?
USS. I don’t think these things make much difference either way.
MIL. Oh, come, Barry, you can’t expect me to believe that.
USS. Yes, I mean that what we have on one side is taken away from the
other; so the world’s lots are more fairly divided than you imagine. Our
natures remain much the same at their root. There is always the original
pain.
MIL. I suppose you cynical philosophers must invent some grievance from
lack of real troubles.
USS. No, Miles.
MIL. Well, if you only knew how my brother envies your good fortune.
USS. There are others Carden Tyrrell might envy, but he need not envy
me. By the way, where is he?
MIL. He is out--I suppose in the heather field.
USS. Oh--(_After a short pause_) He has finished all his work there,
hasn’t he?
MIL. Yes, the young grass is coming up beautifully now. Do you want to
see him at once? I can send for him. In any case he is sure to be back
soon.
USS. That will do. I am in no great hurry.
MIL. You have some business with him?
USS. Well, yes. It is about this very subject of land reclamation. I
hear he is about to raise another large loan from Government, in order
to extend these operations of his.
MIL. Really?
USS. So they told me yesterday in Dublin at the Board of Works.
MIL. When Grace hears this, there will be more troubles and disputes.
USS. Most likely. What a pity your sister-in-law defeats all her objects
by her manner towards Carden.
MIL. Oh indeed, she is very impatient with him. Yet she is good enough
in her way too.
USS. Precisely; and would probably have made an excellent wife for
almost any other man; but for your brother--well, it might have been
better if he had never thought of marriage at all.
MIL. What? Surely he might have found some one to suit him. Why should
you say such a thing?
USS. (_with a frightened look_). Why?
MIL. Yes, Barry. But what is the matter with you?
USS. (_quickly recovering himself_). Oh, nothing, Miles--nothing. I
merely meant to say that it would be very difficult for anyone to suit
Carden. He is a person so much of himself, you know.
MIL. Ah, it is certainly a great misfortune he ever met Grace. And their
estrangement is so extraordinary for he once used to be so fond of her.
USS. Yes, they generally begin that way. I remember just before he
became engaged he told me that he thought till then he should never
marry, but that at last he had found real happiness. They all say that,
you know.
MIL. You may very well philosophise over what is past, Barry. But why
did you not then try to dissuade him?
USS. Of course I tried to dissuade him then. I did my best.
MIL. Oh, you did, did you?
USS. Yes, of course. I warned him against the danger of marrying a girl
with whom he was only acquainted so short a time. I entreated him to
wait a while at all events, as he was then only twenty-one and she
something younger. But all to no purpose. Ah, if he had waited, he could
not have failed to discover that she was only marrying him for his means
and position, and that she did not in the least care for him. Besides I
was certain from the first that he had no real affection or respect for
her.
MIL. Indeed? What made you so certain of that, Barry?
USS. Well, you see, Carden and I had been intimate so long. We had been
brought up together in fact, so that I fancy I understand him better
than anyone. The sudden overturning of all his ideas at that time seemed
to me strange and unnatural. He was like one bewitched. A man’s whole
nature somehow does not change in a moment. You were too young, Miles,
to know him in those days; but he was so ideal, so imaginative, as
engaging as some beautiful child who saw nothing real in the world
outside his own fairy dreams.
MIL. (_with a baffled look_). I have memories of those days!
USS. They are vivid with me. Oh, he always did so fascinate and interest
me. What poetry he put into those days of my youth--the days that are
dead. (_Pause._) Then to see him suddenly changed, grown even prosy
under the power of her influence, it made it impossible for me to
consider this attachment of his genuine or likely to endure. And has not
the result proved that I was right?
MIL. I fear I must admit, Barry, that you were, alas, a reliable
prophet.
USS. Oh, I foresaw all. I knew this change could not last. The old, wild
nature had to break out again when the novelty was over. It was a
misfortune since he was married, but it was inevitable. There are some
dispositions too eerie, too ethereal, too untamable for good, steady,
domestic cultivation, and if so domesticated they avenge themselves in
after time. Ah, foolishly his wife and her friends thought they were
going to change Carden to their model of a young man, but the latent,
untamable nature was not to be subdued. Its first sign of revolt against
suppression was when he began this vast work in the heather field.
MIL. (_with a puzzled look_). Barry, I--I do not understand.
USS. Miles, you must admit it was rather an extravagant work. He has
sunk a fortune of borrowed capital in the reclamation of that mountain.
Look at all the men he employed to root up rocks, and the steam ploughs,
too, that have been working during these last years.
MIL. But surely he will obtain a large rent for the rich grass he has
made to grow there. That ought to more than compensate for his outlay.
USS. Meanwhile interest is accruing. The grass has not grown
sufficiently for letting as yet. Then payment of rent cannot follow till
long after, always supposing that it ever produces much rent.
MIL. (_surprised_). Why do you say that? Is not the land good now.
USS. Ah, Miles, do you not know that the soil in such places is very
wild and untamable? If heather lands are brought into cultivation for
domestic use, they must be watched, they must have generous and loving
treatment, else their old wild nature may avenge itself.
[_He averts his look._
MIL. (_with mingled wonder and uneasiness_). Avenge itself? How, Barry?
USS. Why, the wild heather may break out upon them soon again.
MIL. Oh--(_Then eagerly_) But don’t you think Carden has given the best
of treatment to the heather field?
USS. (_slowly and gently_). I do not know whether his treatment was
sufficiently kind, as farmers say here in West Ireland. Somehow he
seemed too impatient for the change. He was hardly considerate enough,
perhaps, in the accomplishment of his will.
MIL. (_with dejection_). You evidently think there is something
unsatisfactory in the business.
USS. Let us hope for the best, Miles. In any case we ought to try and
prevent him from embarking in further schemes.
MIL. Do, Barry. If there is one person in the world he will listen to,
it is you. Besides you will remove a fresh cause of quarrels with Grace:
and who knows but you may be able to do more afterwards. Stop--I see him
coming now through the garden.
[_CARDEN TYRRELL, a rather powerfully built man of one and
thirty, with light hair, spare growth of beard, unsteady
eyes, very large forehead, and lower part of face small,
dressed negligently in a dark suit, enters from the
back._
TYR. (_smiling_). Oh, how goes it with you, Barry? You have not favoured
us with visits much of late. What have you been doing?
USS. Well, I have been to Dublin for one thing.
TYR. So I heard. But is it true you are reducing all your rents?
USS. Yes, I _have_ been reducing them somewhat.
TYR. My goodness. I suppose you will end by making the tenants a present
of your property. You call me a dreamer, but it seems that I am the
practical man.
USS. (_laughing_). Oh, that does not follow at all. I consider it wiser
to give a little in time, than later on to have perhaps more wrung from
me by the Land Commission.
TYR. But one should never depreciate the value of one’s property. I am
afraid, Barry, you are mismanaging your affairs. Have you begun yet to
reclaim that bog outside your demesne, as I advised?
USS. No, Carden.
TYR. There, you see. Well, a fortune is to be made by such work. You
would be much better employed at it than at reducing your rents. But, my
dear old Barry, there is no use in arguing with you, when you are once
set upon a thing. I suppose it is because you knew I would not approve
of what you are doing that you have not been to see me for so long.
USS. Always suspicious, Carden. But, may I ask why you never come to see
me?
TYR. You forget all I have undertaken--all my responsibilities. I have
little time.
USS. And one would think my time was of no value. Perhaps, Carden, the
real reason is that I might possibly not appreciate some of your
undertakings and responsibilities.
TYR. (_with a swift shy glance_). Why should you think so?
USS. (_smiling_). Oh, I don’t know. I was only wondering.
TYR. But why should that prevent me from going to you?
USS. Precisely, why indeed? I should never have thought of it, if you
had not first suggested the thought.
TYR. Well, you have no reason to think anything of the kind. Just as if
I could be occupied in the way you imagine.
USS. It seems odd that you should, Carden.
TYR. Yet you have an idea all the same, that I could.
USS. Well, to tell you the truth, I heard yesterday that you were
contemplating what seems to me certainly most rash.
TYR. Oh, you did, did you? Let us hear what seems to you most rash.
USS. It is true, is it not, that you are about to borrow another large
sum of money for new land improvements?
TYR. (_somewhat confused_). Yes--it is true--well?
USS. Well--don’t you think you had better not?
TYR. Why not?
USS. Don’t you think you have done enough work--for the present, at all
events? Would it not be better to wait for a time and see whether what
you have already accomplished is going to be successful?
MIL. Yes, Carden, don’t you think you ought to wait for a while longer?
TYR. Wait? Why wait, when I know the work must be successful--nay, is
already successful?
USS. You can scarcely yet be sure of that, Carden.
TYR. Why not?
USS. (_rather confused_). Oh, the nature----
[_He hesitates._
MIL. You can scarcely yet be sure of what the land is capable, you know.
TYR. Can I not see what grass it has produced.
USS. Yes, but will that continue?
TYR. (_scornfully_). Will that continue? Who ever heard so absurd a
question. As well ask will the air continue to bear up the birds? Will
its myriad life continue to pant underneath the sea? Come--my old
friend, my brother--I will not have you talk in this discouraging way
and make such insinuations, as if you were indeed nothing more than mere
country neighbours, who cannot understand my ideas. No, you must believe
in me, and inspire me with heart.
MIL. We do believe in you, Carden--but----
USS. We only suggest prudence.
MIL. Be prudent, Carden.
TYR. Oh, but when you understand the matter, you will see how prudent I
have been. For it was absolutely necessary to obtain this further loan
unless the value of the previous one was to be destroyed.
USS. I do not follow you. Will you explain?
TYR. Well, you see, the drainage of the heather field has practically
swamped the lands below it; so I now must necessarily drain the water
off from them right down to the sea. When I have finished all that grand
ramification of drains, I shall have created a whole vast tract of
fertile pasture which will double the value of my property. What do you
think of that? Why, I believe all you people imagine that I am working
in the dark, that I do not know what I am about. But I tell you I have
excellent reasons for everything I undertake.
USS. Yes, Carden, of course--but you have borrowed a vast sum of money.
Take care that the interest you will have to pay the Board of Works does
not exceed your income.
TYR. There is no danger, Barry. Have I not told you that my income must
be greatly increased?
USS. You have indeed. I can only hope most sincerely that it will be so.
TYR. But you still seem to doubt it all the same. (_USSHER is silent_).
Oh, come, Barry, this is unfriendly of you. Barry, you are a prophet of
evil. Heaven grant that your doubts may be vain, else--Oh, I should be
the most miserable of men. But they are vain--they are, they are--even
despite your other memorable prophecy that, alas, has come too true. Ah,
do you remember your warning to me ten years ago?
USS. You mean just before your marriage? Yes.
TYR. (_gloomily_). I wonder had that anything to do with its
unhappiness. I wonder if these doubts now will bring misfortune on my
present undertakings.
USS. (_in a frightened voice_). Carden, for pity’s sake stop. Don’t
speak like that. Forget any doubts I may have now expressed. Forget
them--forget them. I was wrong ever to have interfered with my advice.
Never will I do so again. No--I have not the right. See, Carden, for all
I know you may succeed now. I heartily hope you will. You are determined
to, and discouragement might only cause you to fail. No--you must not
have a second misfortune to cast at me. Good-bye.
[_He prepares to go._
MIL. Oh, Barry, do not leave us in this way. Think--
TYR. Oh, I am sorry you should take anything I said in that light. I did
not mean, Barry, really to----
USS. No, Carden, forgive me, but I was for the moment unnerved by the
thought that you should attribute to me any of your ill luck. No--I hope
you will always find me a help to you instead, whenever you may require
me.
TYR. Ah, now you are like yourself again--the Barry of other days. I
knew you would understand me when I explained everything to you.
USS. I hope, Carden, at least I may never be to you the cause of ill
luck.
[_Exit at back._
TYR. Dear old Barry, it makes him positively angry to see me improving
my property, because he has not the enterprise to improve his own. But I
think I have convinced him that he was mistaken in his estimate of my
work.
MIL. You certainly frightened him, Carden. I have never seen him as he
was just now.
TYR. Oh, I really did not mean what I said. He only annoyed me by his
stupid doubting.
MIL. Still--as a matter of fact long ago he tried to dissuade you from
marrying Grace--isn’t that so?
TYR. Yes. He was full of doubts and objections then as now--only then he
was right. But now--ha, ha--well, I know he is altogether wrong.
MIL. Why do you say you know, Carden? Why are you so certain now?
TYR. Because I see so clearly before me.
MIL. That at least is a comfort. But perhaps he might be wrong in the
other matter too. Don’t you think it would be well also if you would
determine to belie his doubts of long ago as well as of to-day?
TYR. What do you mean?
MIL. Why, Carden, to try and prove that after all he was wrong when he
advised you not to marry Grace.
TYR. (_with a sigh_). Ah--impossible.
MIL. Don’t say that, Carden.
TYR. Oh, Miles, you do not understand.
MIL. But have you never tried?
TYR. Tried--?
MIL. Yes, tried. You know there is nothing really wrong about her.
TYR. Nothing, nothing--and everything. The same thing that is wrong
about me. That is how it is between us.
MIL. But might you not try to fall in just a little with her ways? She
is good after all.
TYR. My dear Miles you don’t know what you are talking about. Of course
she is good enough. I know that perfectly well. But she has no sense of
compromise--no consideration for me at all. She always despised me.
MIL. Oh, Carden, no----
TYR. Oh, but yes. That is why she is so indignant I should take an
interest in anything except herself. She would shape my life altogether
after her own standard and that of Lady Shrule. I have often given in
before, but the result was she became more and more exacting, until at
last I found matters quite intolerable. Oh, it is useless to deny that
here at least Barry’s warnings have come true.
MIL. How extraordinary that you should have changed so towards her--you
who once were so devoted.
TYR. Ah, Miles, I have simply found her to be absolutely different from
what I once imagined her. I was very young then, very inexperienced. I
longed for sympathy, and thought it was easy to find. I idealised women
in those days. I believed that they were idealists. Ah, that was my
fatal error.
MIL. But surely you don’t mean to deny that some are?
TYR. I don’t believe any are, really. They may be on an average more
fanciful than man, but your true idealist can only be a man. Alas! had I
known that then, my fate would have been very different. I thought
others were easy to find, in whom I could confide as in Barry.
MIL. Do you consider him an idealist?
TYR. I should think so indeed--a true idealist--only he is in a way so
drilled and careful, that he will never let himself go. But he is such a
friend, and understands everything. No, I never knew isolation when we
were together in our youth. Isolation only began with my marriage which
led me out into a lonely world. Oh, it was a great misfortune. And I
have no one to blame but myself.
MIL. And yet--and yet were you really so much to blame? She was so
beautiful----
TYR. Ah, you have said it. There you have found the cause of all the
trouble. But Barry would never have wavered.
MIL. Oh, he is a hardened philosopher whom no beauty could soften.
TYR. That is because, unlike most people, he can see the truly
beautiful, and so is heedless of shams.
MIL. Shams? And you can speak like that of her beauty. How I remember
her on your wedding-day, when as her little page I held her train? I was
only nine years old then, and thought she was some tall white fairy that
had come to live with us. Oh, Carden, think of that time. Its memory
might banish much bitterness.
TYR. Too late, too late. You are still very young, Miles. I have
outgrown the capability of such sentiment.
MIL. But you have not outgrown the great kindness of your nature. No,
that I could never believe. Ought it not in these difficulties to help
you? Why, see how good you are always to me.
TYR. Ah, yes, that is different, Miles.
MIL. And Kit, too--are you not most affectionate and kind to him?
TYR. My poor little son, of course--how could I be otherwise to him? He
is really so loveable and such a companion to me. For just now he is
wonderfully like what you were, Miles, when you acted as that pretty
page. His age besides is the same as yours was then; so that the very
sight of him calls back to me the days of my youth. Oh, that happy time
before my fatal mistake! Miles, _do_ you remember that time?
MIL. Remember? How well I remember!
TYR. I suppose I had troubles then, as now; but memory has idealised
those past scenes, till only their beauty remains, wafted back to me
like an aroma from some lost paradise. I feel I shall never know the joy
of those days again.
MIL. You must not think such things, Carden. Days as good as these will,
I am sure, return.
TYR. Ah no, Miles--their poetry, never--the hope that shines like a
spring-day sun upon our youth! It warms us with such life. It inspires
us to attempt so many deeds. With what expectations we travel. What
materials we are to make out of it all. Do you remember when we went
abroad together?
MIL. (_joyfully_). Oh, yes, of course I do, Carden.
TYR. Well, it seems funny that I should have taken you with me then on
travels you were too young to appreciate: but I could not bear to leave
you who had no protector save me after our father died.
MIL. You kind brother.
TYR. Yes, I carried you off, my little Miles, as you were then.
MIL. And how I enjoyed myself.
TYR. What fairie towns we came to--Boppart on the Rhine with its quaint
old houses. Then we sailed our boat through the hills to Lorlei, and
watched where the river nymphs used long ago to glide, laughing, through
the gold-lit depths of the stream.
MIL. Yes, and you told me the legend of their gold--how it was robbed
and restored and still guarded by them.
TYR. I did; and you, little practical man that you were, you bent down
to the water expecting to see the glitter of the Rhine Gold!
MIL. (_laughing_). The marvellous seemed real in those days.
TYR. Ah, those bright happy days! And do you remember that Sunday
morning in Cologne Cathedral when all the boys sang Palestrina so
divinely?
MIL. I remember we stood by great iron gates. I looked up in your face
and wondered why it shone through its tears.
TYR. How pure the silver voice chords soared to the vaults of stone!
Pure as our joy in those days. Fit music for those bright young days.
MIL. Yes, everything seemed joyful then.
TYR. Oh, what brave times we used to have together. You know we were
always such friends.
MIL. (_with emotion_). Indeed we always were, Carden. There is no one in
the whole world I love as well as you. You have ever been the best of
brothers to me.
TYR. (_goes over mysteriously to MILES_). Then you think, Miles, you
will always help me?
MIL. (_surprised_). Why, Carden, of course----
TYR. (_with anxious intensity_). You will not leave me, if--if ever I
should stand helpless and alone, will you Miles?
MIL. Good gracious, no. But what makes you imagine such a thing?
TYR. Well, somehow I feel that persons and objects are receding from me
and becoming more unreal in these later times. (_Crosses over to sofa at
right and kneeling on it with one knee, gazes out at the mountain._) Do
you know, Miles, I often think that my life of pain and unrest here is
only a dream after all.
MIL. And like a dream this suffering will pass away, Carden, let us hope
never to return.
TYR. (_sadly_). No, oh no. It would be too much to expect that. A
dream--a bad dream (_as if suddenly illumined_), yet with intervals too
of wakefulness now and then.
MIL. (_approaching him_). Of wakefulness? What do you mean? When are
those intervals?
TYR. When I am out in the heather field.
MIL. The heather field?
TYR. (_with enthusiasm_). Yes--the great mountain field out there
(_points out at back_), that it was my ideal to bring to fruitfulness.
There I awaken to true life indeed, as I stand looking over the
Atlantic; and sea winds sweep against my feet the young grass in its
matchless Irish green that gleams a golden green in the Autumn sun
to-day. There I am haunted by those departed joys of my youth--again and
again.
MIL. (_with a puzzled look_). There? But why there, Carden. Why there
more than anywhere else?
TYR. Oh you matter-of-fact Miles--still the same as the little wise
Miles of long ago, who used to ask such quaint questions. How different
we are? Yet how delightful I always find you. “Why there?” you ask. Ha,
ha!
MIL. (_a little disconcerted_). Evidently you consider it a superfluous
question. But I think I may very reasonably ask it all the same.
TYR. Well, then, because there after years of joyless stagnation I find
myself again in an ideal domain--away from fretful surroundings--alone!
except for little Kit who loves the mountain and its wild flowers. You
know, Miles, how like I have said he now looks to what you were in the
old days? At moments, indeed, I can hardly believe it is he and not you.
So his presence there is no hindrance to that evocation of the past. No;
he serves rather to quicken the magic of the heather field.
MIL. (_with sudden emotion_). Oh, to think I could ever have been so
much to you. How good you always were to me, Carden.
TYR. I could not help it. You belonged to the beauty of that time.
MIL. All this sounds like the marvellous tales you used to tell me when
I was a child. I see your imagination is the same as ever.
TYR. And you call what I tell you only imagination.
MIL. Well, Carden--but what else.
TYR. (_resignedly_). Ah, I suppose I cannot help you. You too are like
Barry who said the same thing when I once told him of the voices----
MIL. (_with vague alarm_). Voices, Carden? Why--what now are these?
TYR. Out there--over the mountain. Oh, the vivid brightness of those
voices, as they float back from the past on each changing breeze!
MIL. (_anxiously_). You only heard the wind whistle along the coast.
Don’t heed it any more, Carden.
TYR. Why should I not heed such celestial song?
MIL. A dream phantom of the desolate mountain.
TYR. No; it is only your words I hear as in a troubled dream.
MIL. (_gently_). Carden, it is deceiving you--this wonderful
imagination.
TYR. What?--imagination again?
MIL. Of course.
TYR. (_patiently_). Ah well, I cannot convince you, Miles. But what does
it matter? You are delightfully sympathetic to me all the same. I feel
this opening of my soul to you has even done me good. Yes, it does me
good to be listened to occasionally. It leaves a great peace after it;
and I have not felt so peaceful as now for many a day. Indeed, if this
could last, it would be almost like the old time again.
[_MRS GRACE TYRRELL, a rather tall, thin woman of about
thirty but looking younger, with a pale face, brown hair
and an undefinable attractiveness in her outward manner
and movements enters by door at R. She is dressed
plainly, but with exceeding neatness. TYRRELL takes a
large book from the shelves at back of sofa on which he
then sits and turns over the leaves, suppressing a look
of annoyance._
MIL. (_going towards her politely_). I suppose you have been out on your
rounds this morning as usual, Grace?
GR. Yes, as usual. Have you been here since breakfast?
MIL. Yes.
GR. Studying, I suppose.
MIL. Not much.
GR. Why?
MIL. Oh, Barry Ussher was here, and then Carden and I have been talking.
GR. And so your morning was wasted, Miles?
MIL. Oh, not wasted, Grace.
GR. I think it would have been more profitably employed in working for
your examinations than in talking to your brother.
MIL. I am not at all so certain you are right.
GR. You must admit you have plenty of time for talking without allowing
it to interfere with your studies.
TYR. (_looking up from his book_). It is so hard for us, Miles, is it
not, when we are together, to refrain?
GR. What you two can have to say perpetually to each other puzzles me.
You never visit anywhere nor seem to know what is going on in the
neighbourhood.
TYR. If we did, I am certain we shouldn’t trouble to speak about it.
GR. Oh, indeed.
TYR. No; the subjects that mutually interest us are far different. Among
other things, we were talking before you came in over our journey long
ago on the Continent. (_Then as if carried away by the subject of the
moment_) Look, in this architectural book there are plates representing
some buildings we saw then. Here is a Romanesque house at Boppart on the
Rhine. It is a unique specimen of domestic architecture in that period.
And here--this is the bishop’s house at Würzburg. How beautifully the
oriel is poised there at the angle, like a hooded falcon on its perch;
what a genius these medieval architects had for soothing with
picturesque ideality the restless suffering spirit of their time. To
gaze on their work makes one forget oneself and everything else----
GR. (_who the while has been looking about her with an impatient and
wearied expression_). Goodness me, what a litter the room is in with all
these books and papers.
TYR. (_with a momentary look of humiliation_). Oh!
GR. What brought me here, by the way, was to tell you that I must have
it thoroughly dusted and tidied at once, as the Shrules come to lunch
to-morrow.
TYR. Yes, but what have they got to do with my room?
GR. We shall want it to sit in. I could not think of letting anyone see
it in its present state.
TYR. (_fretfully_). Can’t you leave my room alone?
GR. There! as usual, you are disagreeable when your wife wants anything.
TYR. No; but I have a quantity of important papers that it would give me
endless trouble at present to sort, and put away.
MIL. Oh, why cause him all this inconvenience, Grace? Will not the
drawing-room suit you just as well?
GR. Lord Shrule has had an attack of gout and does not like going
upstairs----
MIL. Then bring them here. But you need not upset the room. Everyone
knows it’s a work-room.
GR. I could not think of allowing any strangers to see it in this state.
MIL. I wonder how you can attach so much importance----
GR. (_coldly_). That will do, Miles. As usual you don’t know what you
are talking about.
MIL. Hei-ho.
[_He begins to gather his books together on the
writing-table._
TYR. You are not going, Miles, are you?
MIL. I think I shall try if I can read in the summer-house outside.
[_Exit at back, carrying with him his books._
GR. (_quietly_). Well, I suppose you had better put away all these old
papers at once, and let the housemaid come in.
TYR. Impossible.--I am too busy.
GR. That’s what you always say. You imagine yourself the busiest man in
the world; and as a matter of fact you have nothing to do.
TYR. Nothing to do?
GR. (_calmly_). What have you to do?
TYR. (_checking his irritation_). Very well, we won’t discuss that old
subject. Anyhow I require my papers, as a man comes to see me to-morrow
on business connected with them.
GR. Who is this man?
TYR. The drainage inspector of the Board of Works.
GR. Indeed! Why, I thought he had finished everything here long ago.
TYR. Oh, so he has.
GR. Well, what is he coming for now?
TYR. (_vaguely_). Oh--you see--it would take too long to explain just at
present. Besides you might not understand.
GR. (_with a penetrating look_). You know I would understand well
enough. But you never were a person to be relied upon! You are now
trying to hide something from me. Come, it is as good to tell it to me
at once.
TYR. (_bridling up_). I am not trying to hide anything from you. I don’t
care whether you know it or not.
GR. Well, then, why is this man coming?
TYR. He is to lay out some drains in the valley beneath the heather
field.
GR. (_astounded_). What?--You don’t mean to say you are going to drain
all that immense tract of land too?
TYR. Yes. It is necessary now after the other work. So I am going to
obtain a new loan from Government to carry it out.
GR. A new loan! We shall certainly be ruined this time.
TYR. No--no--Why, can you not see the enormous improvement this work
must be to the estate?
GR. Oh, that is what you are always saying; and the estate for some
years past has been steadily growing worse and worse, until now we are
almost reduced to difficulties.
TYR. You are quite mistaken. I tell you we are on the eve of seeing our
income doubled. Just consider the rent that must soon be produced by the
heather field.
GR. (_with a gesture of impatience_). The heather field. Up to this,
indeed, it has been nothing but a gigantic loss. And who knows but it
may never be anything else? My goodness, can you not wait to see if it
will be a success before you swamp the estate with this new debt?
TYR. No--no--every delay is a loss of profit. You do not understand.
GR. Oh, I am tired of your always telling me that I do not understand. I
understand perfectly that you are bringing us to beggary.
TYR. Well--it is certainly amazing that you should think so. But then,
you know, you are never open to reason--never in sympathy with my ideas.
GR. How on earth can I be, when like everyone else I believe you to be
utterly mistaken in what you are doing?
TYR. I do not mean what I am doing at present--but the whole tenor of my
life and ideas. You have never understood them.
GR. (_sharply_). Look here, it’s beginning to irritate me this talk
about my not understanding. So I see--you think yourself the great
incomprehensible, ha, ha. Well, you are quite mistaken. Everyone
understands you. So do I, absolutely. For in spite of all your efforts
to be singular, you are a very ordinary person, in whom there is nothing
particular to understand.
TYR. (_helplessly_). What on earth do you mean by always harping on my
efforts to be singular? Heaven knows I cannot see how I try to be so.
GR. (_with a little laugh, as she taps her foot on the floor_). I
suppose you are now habituated to the effort.
TYR. (_looking at her with a sort of wonder_). Oh, how impossible it is
for you ever to know how I have suffered--how I have aspired!
GR. (_impatiently_). Really, it becomes too provoking when you begin
talking about these imaginary sufferings and aspirations of yours. What
on earth have you to suffer? You are in good health are you not? Were
you not more than fortunate to have married as you did? Have you not
independent means? What then can a man like you aspire more to? It is
true, of course, that you have crippled your resources by mismanagement
and extravagance. But, if you will now be led by me, and put this new
scheme of drainage out of your head, and if we are economical for a
while, the property must recover. Then you can have absolutely nothing
to trouble you.
TYR. Oh, this matter-of-fact way you have of looking at things! This
simple barren prose of your mind! It is that, that is driving me mad.
GR. Driving you mad----
[_Pause, during which they look at each other._
TYR. Well, I suppose you think I am so. (_He waits for her answer._)
What an absurd idea. This is another means of annoying me.
GR. I must defend myself.
TYR. What do you mean?
GR. Seeing you are so bent on ruining our child and me, I can only think
one thing.
TYR. That I am mad?
GR. (_without answering him walks to back_).
TYR. Grace.
GR. (_turning_). Well--what is it?
TYR. Do you mean this?
GR. (_still walking to back_). What did I say?
TYR. You said--I mean you insinuated that--I am mad.
GR. (_Does not answer._)
TYR. You do not mean this. Take back what you have said.
GR. (_turning suddenly_). I cannot.
[_She still walks to back._
TYR. Before you go take back your words. You don’t know how they
frighten me. Again I beseech you to take back those words. You do not
believe what you say.
GR. I do believe them. I believe you to be mad.
[_Exit at back._
TYR. (_laughing nervously_). Oh--ha--mad. How can she say such a thing?
Mad--who is saner than I am? Ha--ha--I suppose people of her type think
everyone who differs from them, mad. How curious! Ah, we have not a
single sympathy. That is what it is. (_With a look of terror_) Merciful
heaven, is it possible, though, she may be right? Can there possibly be
a doubt as to which is the reality and which is the dream? Oh,
horror--horror!
[_He sinks upon the sofa and covers his face with his
hands._
_MILES TYRRELL, carrying his books as before, enters at back._
MIL. It is rather chilly reading out of doors. As I saw Grace just go
through the garden, I may perhaps again have this place to myself.
(_Perceiving TYRRELL._) Oh, you here still. Why, Carden, what is the
matter with you?
TYR. (_rising, approaches in a dazed manner, and seems involuntarily to
feel his way with his hands_). Nothing--only that persons and things now
more than ever seem strangely to recede from me and become more unreal.
But you--_you_, Miles, said you would never leave me (_glances around
with a shudder_) if ever I should stand helpless and alone. Oh, Miles,
my brother--
[_He hides his face on MILES’ shoulder._
MIL. Carden--
[_The books fall from his arms on the floor._
(_End of Act I._)