ACT I.

THREE LANCASHIRE PLAYS

The Game; The Northerners; Zack

By Harold Brighouse

London: Samuel French, Ltd. Publishers

1920

[Illustration: 0007]

PREFACE

|In another age than ours play-books were a favourite, if not the only,

form of light reading, and the novel, now almost universally preferred,

is the development of the last century. But a writer of plays should be

the last person in the world to resent the novelist's victory, for plays

are written to be acted, and reach a full completeness only by means of

the collaboration of author with producer, scene-painter, actors and,

finally and essentially, audience. The author's script bears to the

completed play a relationship similar to that of an architect's plan to

a completed building.

Architect's plans, however, are not unintelligible to the layman,

especially to the layman who is not devoid of imagination, the layman

who is ready to spend a trifling mental effort and to become, be it ever

so little, expert. And so with printed plays, those ground-plans of

the drama. There must have been in the eighteenth century, a larger

percentage of the reading public than obtains to-day that was expert in

reading plays; plays were thought--you can find ample proof of it in

the Diarists--easier reading than the novels of Fielding, Richardson and

Smollett. Perhaps the comparative brevity of a play was, even in those

unhurried days, a point in its favour; certainly the play-reading habit

was strong and one likes to think that it is not lost. To read dully

the script of a spectacular play is desolating weariness, but the same

script read with sympathetic imagination becomes the key to fairyland,

and from an armchair one sees more marvels than ever stagecraft could

present. There are abominable limitations on the stage; producers are

tedious pedants; but the reader mentally producing a play from the book

in his hand looks through a magic casement at what he gloriously will

instead of through a proscenium arch at the handiwork of a merely human

producer. Play-reading, in fact, obeys the law that as a man sows so

shall he reap; a little trouble, rapidly eased by practice, leads one to

a great deal of pleasure.

It depends, of course, upon the play as well as upon the reader, and

though one has rather romantically instanced spectacular plays, their

scripts do, as a rule, belong to the class of play which is not worth

reading. They are, or are apt to become, the libretto to some specific

scenery or stage effect and the imaginative reader, failing to hit upon

the particular staging intended, is lost in puzzlement. Nor do plays of

action make the best reading. There are no plays but plays of action,

but action is of many kinds, and the play whose first concern is

situation and rapid physical movement is so specifically a stage-play,

so sketchy in its ground-plan until the collaborators work in unison

upon it, as to make reading more of a torment than a pleasure. While

you must have wordless pantomime at the basis of every play, it is those

plays which exhibit in high degree the use of action in the form of

dialogue that are the more comfortable reading; and, always postulating

that a play is a play--not necessarily a playwright's play, the

admiration of his brother craftsmen, but a thing practicable, actable

and effective on the stage--the more physical action is subordinated to

character, to the exploration of the springs of human motive, the better

it is for reading purposes and the better for all purposes.

Ibsen led the modern play, where the modern novel followed it, to the

investigation of character rather than to the unfolding of a story,

and one suggests that readers who find satisfaction in the modern

psychological novel should find the reading of modern plays to their

taste for the reason that the dramatists, though they haven't in a play

the same opportunities for analysis as the novelists find in their more

spacious pages, are essentially "out for" the same thing.

The type of play one is here writing about is one which has not, in the

past, flourished extensively in the popular theatres; it is the type

known, rather obscurely, as the "Repertory" play. It was called by

that name, probably in derision, and the Repertory play was held to

be synonymous with the un-commercial play. Then queer things happened.

"Hindle Wakes" broke out of the Repertory palisade, made dramatic

history and, what from the amazed commercial manager's standpoint was

even more startling, a fortune; "The Younger Generation" followed into

the commercial camp; and in the rent profiteer's year of 1919, when

managers seemed forced by ruthless circumstance more even than by

inclination to play the safest game and to offer the Big Public nothing

but repetitions of the tried and true, two plays from the Repertories

came to town. "The Lost Leader" filled the Court Theatre in a very heat

wave, and "Abraham Lincoln" took the King to Hammersmith--with many

thousands of his subjects. So that it will not do to speak of plays as

commercial on the one hand and Repertory on the other. Repertory has

golden possibilities, if you don't expect too much of it. It would be

fallacious to expect the same pay-dust from "Abraham Lincoln" as from

"Chu Chin Chow." Nor would one expect Joseph Conrad to sell like Nat

Gould.

Sincerity is a virtue possessed, as a rule, by the Repertory play, but

it will by no means do to claim for this sort of play a monopoly of

sincerity. The most popular type of drama (and the most English),

melodrama, is rigidly sincere--to the confounding of the Intellectual.

There is plenty of dishonest thinking and unscrupulous play-making, but

not in popular melodrama. In melodrama which pretends to be something

other than what it is, there is immediate and obvious insincerity, but

there is no writing with the tongue in the cheek in downright, unabashed

melodramas of the old Adelphi, and the present Lyceum type. It will not

do to call the "highbrow" plays sincere, with the implication that

all other plays are insincere, any more than they can themselves be

sweepingly characterized as uncommercial. Sincerity, anyhow, may be

beside the point, and the term Repertory play, though unsatisfactory,

stands for something perfectly well understood. No definition would

be apt to the whole body of Repertory plays, but one would like,

diffidently, to suggest that Repertory plays are written by men and

women of intellectual honesty who postulate that their audience will be

composed of educated people--and that attempt at a definition fails. It

has a snobbish ring.

And now, after generalizing about Repertory plays and reading plays,

to come down to the particular instance of the Lancashire plays here

printed. They are three of seven plays which their author has written

about the people of his native county, and reasons for publishing them

now are that nobody wanted to publish plays during the war, and that the

author is an optimist about the future of Repertory. Which last is only

a sort of reason for publishing some of Repertory's step-children--that,

at any rate, the new men may know, if they care to know, these workaday

examples deriving from the only Repertory Theatre in Great Britain which

created a local drama. Though none of these three plays was, in fact,

produced by Miss Horniman's Company, they nevertheless belong to the

"Manchester School," which was a by-product of her Company.

The "Manchester School" was never conscious of itself, as the Irish

School was. The Irishmen had a country, a patriotic sentiment, a

national mythology; they had, so soon after the beginning that it seemed

they had it from the first, the already classical tradition of Synge;

they had in the Deidre legend a subject made to their hands, a subject

which it appeared every Irishman must tackle in order to pass with

honours as an Irish dramatist; and there was explicit endeavour to

create an Irish Drama. In Manchester, so far were we from any explicit

ambition to create a Lancashire Drama that we denied the fact of its

creation. What reputation it had was not home-made in Manchester and

exported, but made in London and America. At Miss Horniman's theatre

in Manchester, there were so many bigger things being done than the

earlier, technically weak plays of the local authors. And it is worth

pointing out that the authors went (it was admirable, it was almost

original in them) for their material to what was immediately under their

noses; they took as models the Lancashire people of their daily life,

and in their plays they did not always flatter their models. The models

saw themselves in the theatre rather as they were than as they liked

to think they were, and they hadn't the quixotry to praise too highly

authors who held up to them a mirror of disconcerting truthfulness.

It came upon the authors unexpectedly, as even something a little

preposterous, to be taken seriously, to be labelled, heaven knows by

whom, the "Manchester School," as if they had a common aim..

That, surely, is the significance of the "Manchester School," that

the phenomenon and the hope. Miss Horniman established her Company in

Manchester, with Mr. B. Iden Payne, a genius, as her producer of plays.

What she gave to Manchester was perhaps more, perhaps not more, than the

aftermath of the historic Vedrenne-Barker campaign at the Court Theatre;

at any rate, she gave a series of Repertory plays--plays which had

no likelihood of being seen in the provinces under the touring

system--notably well acted; she demonstrated that drama was a

living art, and in the light of that demonstration there outcropped

spontaneously, un-self-consciously, the body of local drama now known

as the "Manchester School." Whatever the individual merits of the

Lancashire plays may be, whatever, even, their collective importance or

unimportance, they have this significance of localization. Stimulated by

Miss Horniman's catholic repertoire, local authors sought to express in

drama local characteristics.

There are no two questions in the writer's mind, nor, he thinks, in

anybody's, as to whether local drama is or is not a good thing. It is

more than ever good in to-day's special London conditions, but it was

always good in and for its own locality, and very good when it broke

away from home, travelled to London and introduced to Londoners

authentic representations of natives of their country. It brought

variety where variety was needed. Not all the plays of the "Manchester

School," of course, have travelled. One or two, indeed, hardly travelled

across the Gaiety Theatre footlights, and in the case of a few others,

mostly one-act plays, there was never the least chance of their emerging

from Lancashire owing to the fact that they were written deliberately

in dialect. A most racy little piece, "Complaints," by Mr.

Ernest Hutchinson, with its scene laid in the office of an Oldham

spinning-mill, is a case in point. One doubts, even, if the

comparatively urbane Manchester audience grasped the whole of its

idiomatic dialogue. But these are the extremes of local drama, and

generally, the Lancashire writers have avoided dialect as, in the first

place, impracticable, and in the second place, disused, except (to

quote Houghton) "amongst the roughest class in the most out-of-the way

districts." Accent is not dialect though possibly originates in it. Even

when one wishes to use dialect one must not, for stage purposes, write

it as it is spoken. The dramatist selects his material from dialect as

he selects his larger material from life. Dramatically correct dialect

is literally incorrect; it is highly selected dialogue which indicates,

but does not obscure, and the true dialect dramatist is not the man who

exactly imitates the speech of a district, but he who most skilfully

adapts its rhythms and picks out its salient words. Synge invented an

Irish dialect which is false in detail and infinitely true in broad

effect, and the "Manchester School," faced with the same difficulty, has

solved it in the same way, hoping, though without much confidence, that

the Lancashire cadences it adopted and used in its very few dialect

plays may sound to alien ears as aptly as the language of Synge's Irish

sounds to our own. Though you may search in vain the dialogue of Mr.

Allan Monkhouse's plays for local characteristics, the "Manchester

School" has as a rule indicated by the use, in greater or less degree,

of local idioms that the speech of Lancashire has a well-marked

individuality; but dialect, as a distinctive variant of the national

language, can hardly be said to exist in Lancashire.

One labours the point a little in order to make clear that the

"Manchester School" had no accidental advantage, over writers who lived

near other provincial Repertory Theatres, in the existence of a language

whose dramatic literature they felt urged to create; there was no

such language. And its absence makes a curiosity of the fact that from

Manchester alone of the Repertory centres has any considerable body of

local drama emerged. (Dublin is another matter; one speaks here of Great

Britain.) Other Repertory centres, like Birmingham and Bristol, must

have local characteristics: Liverpool is, geographically at any rate,

in Lancashire; and Glasgow has a language of its own. None of these

Repertories was sterile, but even Birmingham, despite Mr. John

Drinkwater and "Abraham Lincoln," was economical in creativeness and

fathered no local drama. Must the conclusion be that the Manchester

atmosphere has, with its soot, a vitalizing dramatic principle?

Possibly; but a less fantastic theory is that Manchester had Miss

Horniman, and other Repertories had not. Again one insists that the

Lancashire plays were a by-product, and a by-product only, of Miss

Horniman's Company. Who in their senses would go to Manchester expecting

to evoke a local drama? And if she had gone there with a prejudice in

favour of poetic plays, it is more than likely that no local drama

would have been evoked. Modern Lancashire is industrial Lancashire--one

forgets the large agricultural oases, while nobody but map-makers

and administrators remembers that a slice of the Lake District is in

Lancashire--and industrialism does not inspire the poetic play. Miss

Horniman began, on the contrary, with a season whose best productions,

though it included Maeterlinck, were Shaw's "Widower's Houses" and

McEvoy's "David Ballard." Those two productions seemed, rightly or

wrongly, to fix the type of play preferred by Miss Horniman's Company;

it happened--let us call it realistic comedy--to be the type by which

the life of Lancashire could be best expressed in drama and the future

authors of the "Manchester School," most of them of an impressionable

age, some of them already fumbling their way to dramatic expression,

seized avidly the type and the opportunity. They were not so provincial

as to have to wait for Miss Horniman to come to be introduced to Shaw:

but there are worlds of difference between reading Shaw, even between

seeing him indifferently produced, and a Shaw play transmuted by the

handling of such a producer as Iden Payne. It is putting the

case without hyperbole to say that Miss Horniman's Company was an

inspiration.

The Repertory whose "note" is the poetic play will probably evoke no

local drama, because, until we get the village Repertory, local drama is

the drama of the modern town, wherein the stuff of poetry exists, if at

all, only as a forced revival of folk-lore. Anything can be great

poetry to the great poet; one speaks here of the average playwright, the

observer of his fellow man in a provincial town, seeking his medium of

expression in drama; and such a man is unlikely to find it in the poetic

play or to find encouragement and inspiration from a Repertory where

poetic plays are visibly preferred. It is almost to be said that Miss

Horniman's Company and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre stand for rival

theories of the drama, but not quite; they have too much, including

Shakespeare, in common.

Local drama is too important to be left so specially in the hands of

Miss Horniman and the "Manchester School." It is important for the

localities and important, too, for London; London is quite as ready to

be interested in good plays about people in Aberdeen or Halifax as in

plays about people in New York, but the New York author lives in a

city where plays are produced and the Aberdeen author does not. The

stimulation of local drama is possible only where a local producing

theatre exists; the education of a dramatist is unfinished until he

has heard his lines spoken and watched his puppets move. Drama in the

capitals is standardized to some half-dozen patterns which alter slowly

and, failing the local producing theatre, what is the provincial author

to do but to suppress his originality and to write plays, in hopes of

London production, as near as he can make them to one of the approved

current designs? It is said that were it not for the continued

influx from the provinces, London would die out in three--or is it

two?--generations; and if that is true of life, it is true also of

drama, and the plain duty of those who control British Drama, the

Napoleons of the theatre, is to dig channels whereby healthy provincial

blood may flow to London to revitalize its Drama.

This, which means that Sir Alfred Butt ought to seek out a number of

intelligent producers and endow them in provincial Repertory theatres to

work without interference from above, but always with the vigilant eye

for that byproduct of a rightly inspired Repertory, local drama, is a

simple matter of commercial self-interest, on a par with the action of

the magnates of scientific trade who endow research not out of love

of science, but in the expectation that they will be able some day to

exploit profitably the resulting discoveries. So might Sir Alfred Butt

exploit local authors discovered by the producers of his far-flung

Repertories. The theatre is either a business or a gamble, and in the

hands of men like Sir Alfred Butt it looks less like a gamble every day.

Enlightened business self-interest would look a little to the future, to

the fostering of authorship in provincial towns, to the establishment of

many Repertories.

To come back to the windfalls of the "Manchester School" printed here.

They fell, one of them in the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, at a time

when Miss Horniman's Company was on vacation; another at the Liverpool

Repertory Theatre, which was in origin a secession from Manchester

headed by the late Miss Darragh, with the plays produced by Mr. Basil

Dean, later the first Liverpool Director; and the third so far away from

Manchester as the Empire Theatre, Syracuse, New York State, linked with

Manchester, for all that, through being produced by Mr. Iden Payne.

In reading them again, one is startled for the thousandth time by the

difference between stage and study. The third act of "The Northerners"

makes curious reading, because it depends partly upon the juxtaposition

of the characters on the stage, partly upon the suggestion "off" of

a ruse plagiarized from the Punic Wars, partly upon a spectacular

"curtain," but it is--production proved it--in the focus of the theatre.

It "came off" on the stage. Laughter in the theatre is, again, a

mystery. It is possible that the Lancashire plays in general have the

characteristic of acting more amusingly than they read. "Hindle Wakes"

reads positively austerely; acted, it is full of humour; and one's

recollections of "The Game" on the stage make for the same conclusion.

It has, in the theatre, a far more pronounced tendency to set its

audience laughing than seems apparent in its text. In the case of

"Zack" the funis, one would say, hardly of a subtle kind. Taking the

"Manchester School," bye and large, and remembering the charge against

it that it was "grey" or "dreary," one is forced to believe either that

Lancashire humour is not everybody's humour--Mrs. Metherell in "The Game"

might almost be set as a test--or else that the "Manchester School" has

been confused with the whole body of Miss Horniman's productions; and,

even if so, the charge fails.

There was an Icelandic tragedy produced in the early days of her

Company, which depressed the thermometer alarmingly; there was

Verhaeren's "The Cloister," a great play performed to empty houses,

adding insult to injury by being popularly called "dreary," and the

chill resulting from those two productions, one a mistake of management,

the other a mistake of the public, lasted for years. The case of the

Lancashire Plays is clear; their authors aimed at presenting the human

comedy of Lancashire, and if their dramatic purpose was to be achieved

by the alternative uses of laughter or of tears, they preferred to

achieve it by the ruthless light of laughter. Many of the plays have not

been printed and the appended bibliography includes no examples of the

comedy of Mr. H. M. Richardson, Dr. F. E. Wynne or Mr. M. A. Arabian.

Incomplete record of the Lancashire Plays as it is, it serves to drive

home the contention that the "Manchester School" are, in the main, comic

writers.

Bibliography:

(1) Stanley Houghton--"The Works of Stanley Houghton," three volumes

(Constable & Co.); "Hindle Wakes" (Sidgwick and Jackson); "The Younger

Generation," "Five Short Plays," "Independent Means," "The Dear

Departed," "Fancy Free" (Samuel French, Ltd.).

(2) Allan Monkhouse--"Mary Broome," "The Education of Mr. Surrage"

(Sidgwick & Jackson); "Four Tragedies" (Duckworth & Co); "War Plays"

(Constable & Co.).

(3) Harold Brighouse--"Hobson's Choice," "Garside's Career" (Constable &

Co.); "Dealing in Futures," "Graft" (Samuel French, Ltd. );

"Lonesome-Like," "The Price of Coal," "Converts," (Gowans & Grey, Ltd).

(4) Judge E. A. Parry;--"The Tallyman and other Plays" (Sherratt &

Hughes).

(5) J. Sackville Martin--"Cupid and the Styx" (Samuel French, Ltd.).

THE GAME

A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS

CHARACTERS

Austin Whitworth.

Edmund Whitworth.

Leo Whitworth.

Jack Metherell.

Hugh Martin.

Dr. Wells.

Barnes.

Elsie Whitworth.

Florence Whitworth.

Mrs. Metherell.

Mrs. Wilmot.

Mrs. Norbury.

ACT I

_The Action of the Play takes place in a Lancashire town on the last

Saturday in April between the hours of one and five in the afternoon._

_Austin Whitworth's house in Blackton was built by his father in 1870

and the library is a stately room. The door is on the right. Centre is

a deep bay with a mullioned window and padded window seat. A brisk fire

burns in the elaborate fireplace, with its high club fender. Shelves

line the walls. All the furniture dates from the original period of the

house, and though the chairs may have been upholstered in the meantime,

they would repay fresh attention. Solidity is the keynote of the roomy

but its light wood and bright rugs save it from heaviness._

_The time is one o'clock on the last Saturday in April. A painting of

old John Whitworth is over the fireplace._

_In the armchair is Edmund Whitworth, a prosperous London solicitor. A

bachelor, his habit of dining well has marked his waist-line. Pompous

geniality is his manner. In his hand is a sheet of notepaper which, as

the curtain rises, he finishes reading. Sitting facing him on the

fender is Leo Whitworth, his nephew. Leo is twenty-one and dresses with

fastidious taste y beautifully and unobtrusively. He is small. Just now

he awaits Edmund's verdict with anxiety. Edmund removes his pince-nez

and hands the paper to Leo._

*****

Edmund. I like it, Leo.

Leo. Really, uncle? I asked you to be candid.

Edmund. Yes. I do like It. It's immature, but it's the real thing.

(_Rising and patting his shoulder patronizingly._) There's stuff in you,

my boy.

Leo. You're the first Whitworth who's ever praised my work. The usual

thing's to laugh at me for trying to be a poet.

Edmund. A prophet in his own country, eh? Perhaps they don't know very

much about poetry, Leo.

Leo. (_excitedly, walking about, while Edmund takes his place by the

fire_). Is that any reason for laughing at me? I don't know anything

about hockey, but I don't laugh at Flo and Elsie for playing. As I tell

them, mutual tolerance is the only basis for family life. If I were

a large-limbed athlete they'd bow down and worship, but as I've got a

sense of beauty and no brawn they simply bully the life out of me.

Edmund. You're sure you do tolerate them?

Leo. Of course I do. I'd rather have a sister who's a football maniac

any day than a sister who's a politician. There's some beauty in

catching balls, but there's no beauty in catching votes. What I complain

of is that there's no seriousness in this house about the things that

matter.

Edmund. Such as--poetry?

Leo. Oh, now _you're_ getting at me. All right. I'm used to it. Being

serious about poetry's better than being serious about football, anyhow.

Edmund. Sonnets have their place in the scheme of things.

Leo. A high place, too.

Edmund. I agree with you in putting them above football.

Leo. Then you'll find yourself unpopular here,

Edmund. At the same time, it's possible to overdo the sonnets, Leo.

Leo. Never. Art demands all.

Edmund. My dear boy, if you're going to talk about art and temperament,

and all the other catchwords----

Leo. I'm not. I'm only asking you to tell them you believe in my genius

and then they'll drop thinking I'm making an ass of myself.

Edmund. I see. By the way, what are you making of yourself, Leo?

Leo. A poet, I hope.

Edmund. I meant for a living.

Leo. I have a weak lung.

Edmund. Is that your occupation?

Leo. It is my tragedy.

Edmund. Um.

Leo. You will speak to them for me, uncle? They'll listen to you. At

least you come from London, where people are civilized.

Edmund. Are they? In London I hold a brief for the culture of the

provinces.

Leo. You took jolly good care to get away from the provinces, yourself.

And you mustn't tell me you think Blackton is cultured.

Edmund. I heard my first Max Reger sonata in Blackton long before London

had found him.

Leo. Music's another matter.

Edmund. Yes. Your father played it to me.

Leo. Well, there you are again. Music and football are the only things

he cares about. That's just what I complain of. I've tried to raise his

tastes, but I find generally a lack of seriousness in men of his age. Of

course' there are exceptions.

Edmund. Thank you.

(_Enter Florence Whitworth, in golfing tweeds with bag, and without hat,

hair tumbled by the wind. She is a largemade girl of eighteen, supremely

healthy and athletic._)

Florence. May I hide in here?

Leo. What's there to hide from?

Florence. Eleanor Smith is tackling Elsie in the hall to play hockey for

the High School Old Girls this afternoon. When she finds Elsie won't,

she'll want to try me, so I'll keep out of the way, please.

Edmund. And why won't Elsie?

Florence. We never do when the Rovers are playing at home. I wouldn't

miss seeing the match this afternoon for the best game of hockey I ever

had. (_Slinging the golf-bag in a corner._) Topping round on the links,

uncle. You ought to have come.

Edmund. I'm a sedentary animal, Flo.

Florence. Yes. And you're putting on weight. It's six years since you

were here, and I'll bet you've gone up a stone a year.

Edmund. In my profession a portly figure is an asset. If you have a lean

and hungry look, clients think it's because you sit up late running up

bills of costs. If you look comfortable, they imagine you're too busy

dining to think of the six and eightpences.

Florence. Yes. I never met a slacker yet who wasn't full of excellent

excuses. Leo calls his poetry. You call yours business. Wait till you'll

retire. You'll find it out then if you haven't a decent hobby.

Edmund. But I have.

Florence. It's invisible to the naked eye. You don't golf, and you don't

play tennis or cricket or----

Edmund. I collect postage stamps.

Florence. No wonder you're in bad condition with a secret vice like

that. (_Goes to open window._)

Leo (_sharply_). Don't do that.

Florence. It's blazing hot. I can't imagine what you want a fire for.

Leo. Uncle felt chilly.

Florence. Sorry I spoke. No, I'm not. It serves him right for taking no

exercise.

(_Enter Elsie Whitworth, who, like Florence, is tall and muscular, but

with a slim beauty which, contrasted with Florence's loose limbs and

occasional gawkishness, is, at twenty-two, comparatively mature. Her

indoor dress, to honour the visiting uncle, is elaborate and bright._)

Elsie. Flo, Eleanor Smith wants you.

Florence. I know she does. That's why I'm hiding in here.

Elsie. They're a man short on the team, and----

Florence. Didn't you tell her I can't play to-day? Elsie. She thinks she

can persuade you.

Florence. She can't.

Elsie. You'd better go and tell her so.

Florence (_gathering up her golf-bag_). Blow Eleanor Smith! She thinks

hockey's everything. I hate fanatics. Elsie. She's waiting for you.

Florence. All right. I'll go. (_Exit Florence._)

Elsie. Heard the news, Leo?

Leo. Not particularly.

Elsie (_excitedly_). Jack Metherell's coming in to see father before the

match. Father told me.

Leo. Oh? My pulse remains normal.

Elsie. You've no more blood in you than a cauliflower. I'm tingling all

over at the thought of being under the same roof with Metherell.

Edmund. May I enquire who Mr. Metherell is?

Elsie. Do you mean to say you've never heard of Metherell?

Edmund. I apologise for being a Londoner.

Elsie. That's no excuse. They can raise a decent crowd at Chelsea

nowadays.

Edmund. Indeed? I live at Sevenoaks.

Elsie. You must have heard of Metherell.

Edmund. No. Who is he?

Leo. Metherell is a professional footballer, uncle.

Edmund. Oh!

Elsie (_indignantly_). A professional footballer! He's the finest centre

forward in England.

Edmund (_politely_). Really? Quite a great man.

Leo. Quite. He's the idol of my sisters and the Black-ton roughs. For

two hours every Saturday and Bank Holiday through eight months of

the year forty thousand pairs of eyes are glued on Metherell and the

newspapers of Saturday night, Sunday and Monday chronicle his exploits

in about two columns; but if you don't know what "agitating the spheroid

towards the sticks" means, you'd better not try to read them.

(_Elsie approaches him threateningly._)

He is also good looking and a decent fellow.

Elsie. You'd better add that.

Leo. I will add more. He spends the rest of his time training for those

two hours, and when he's thirty he'll retire and keep a pub; and in

three years eighteen stone of solid flesh will bury the glory that was

Metherell.

Elsie (_threatening him_). You viperous little skunk.

Leo. I appeal to you, uncle. Can a skunk possess the attributes of a

viper?

Elsie. If you say another word against Jack Metherell, I'll knock

you into the middle of next week. You're frightened of the sight of a

football yourself and you dare to libel a man who----

Leo. The greater the truth the greater the libel. You're a solicitor,

uncle. Isn't that so?

Edmund. Do you want my professional opinion?

Leo (_dodging round the table from Elsie_). I want your personal

protection.

Elsie (_giving Leo up_). Uncle, Jack Metherell's the truest sportsman

who ever stepped on to a football field. He's the straightest shooter

and the trickiest dribbler in the game. I'd walk barefooted over thorns

to watch him play, and for Leo to say he'll retire at thirty and grow

fat is nothing but a spiteful idiotic lie.

Edmund (_making peace_) Well, suppose we say he'll retire at thirty-five

and just put on a little flesh and live to a ripe old age, fighting his

battles over again.

Leo. Over a gallon of beer in the saloon bar.

Elsie. If your head wasn't too full of poetry for anything important,

you'd know Jack's a teetotaller. He's never entered a public house and

he never will.

Edmund. If I were you, Leo, I wouldn't quarrel. I should make a poem

about it.

Elsie. It's all he's fit for. Lampooning a great man. I tell you, uncle,

Jack Metherell can do what he likes in Blackton. If he cared to put up

for Parliament, no other man would make a show.

Leo. Oh, the fellow's popular. They all love Jack.

Elsie. Popular. There isn't a woman in the town but would sell her soul

to marry him.

Edmund. This seems to be the old Pagan worship of the body.

Leo. The mob must have a hero. Prize-fighting's illegal and cricket's

slow, so it's the footballer's turn to-day to be an idol.

Elsie. Look here, you can judge for yourself this afternoon.

Leo. Are you coming to the match, uncle?

Edmund. Yes. I'm curious to see it. I suppose you're not going?

Leo. Oh, I shall go.

Edmund. Really? I had gathered that you don't like football.

Leo. I don't like funerals or weddings either, but they're all the sort

of family function one goes to as a duty.

Elsie. A duty. Will you believe me, he never misses a match, uncle?

Leo. If you want to know, I go for professional reasons.

Edmund. Professional?

Leo. I am training myself to be a close observer of my fellow men,

and in a football crowd I can study human passions in the raw. To the

earnest student of psychology the interest is enormous.

Elsie. Yes. You wait for his psychological shout when Blackton score a

goal. You'll know then if his lungs are weak. We go because we like it

and so does he, only we're not ashamed of our tastes and he is. Wait

till Jack Metherel comes on the field this afternoon in the old red and

gold of the Blackton Rovers and----

(_Austin Whitworth enters while she speaks and interrupts her. Without

being grossly fat, Austin is better covered than Edmund, whose elder

brother he is. Without exaggeration, his lounge suit suggests sporting

tendencies. His manner is less confident than that of Edmund, the

successful carver-out of a career, and at times curiously deferential

to his brother. Obviously a nice fellow and, not so obviously, in some

difficulty. With his children he is on friendly chaffing terms, so

habitually getting the worst of the chaff that he is in danger of

becoming a nonentity in his own house. He wears a moustache, which, like

his remaining hair, is grey. Florence follows him._).

Austin. But Metherell won't.

Elsie. What. Has Jack hurt himself at practice? Austin. No.

Leo. What's up with him?

Austin. Nothing.

Elsie. Then why isn't he playing?

Austin. He is playing.

Elsie. You just said----

Austin. He won't wear the Blackton colours. He's playing for Birchester.

He's transferred.

Elsie. You've transferred Jack Metherell! Father, you're joking.

Austin. No.

Elsie (_tensely_). I'll never forgive you. He's the only man on the team

who's Blackton born and bred. The rest are all foreigners.

Florence. Who've you got to put in his place? There isn't another centre

forward amongst them.

Austin. There's Angus.

Florence. Angus! He can't sprint for toffee, and his shooting's the

limit.

Austin. Well, you've to make the best you can of Angus. Metherell

belongs to Birchester now.

Elsie. I don't know what you're thinking about, father. Are you mad?

What did you do it for?

Austin. Money, my dear, which the Club needs badly.

Elsie. It'll need it worse if we lose to-day and drop to the second

division.

Austin. We must not lose to-day.

Florence. You're asking for it. Transferring Metherell. The rest are a

pack of rotters.

Austin. They've got to fight for their lives to-day. Birchester offered

a record fee on condition I fixed at once. I was there last night with

Metherell and he signed on for them.

Florence. It's a howling shame.

Leo. And over Blackton Rovers was written Ichabod, their glory is

departed.

Elsie. Father, do you mind if I go? I might say some of the things I'm

thinking if I stayed.

Florence. I'll come too. I wish to goodness I was playing hockey. It

won't be fun to see Jack Metherell play against us.

(_Florence at door,_)

Austin. It wasn't for fun that I transferred him.

Elsie. No. Worse. For money. You've told us that and--oh, I'd better go.

(_Exeunt Flo and Elsie._)

Austin. Go with them, Leo.

Leo. Shall I?

Austin. Please.

(_Exit Leo._)

Well, Edmund?

Edmund (_puzzled_). Well, Austin?

Austin. Now you can judge exactly how pressing my necessities are.

You've heard it all.

Edmund. Really? You've only talked football.

Austin. Football is all. I'm sorry I got in last night too late to have

a chat with you, but (_shuddering_) what I was doing yesterday is public

property this morning.

Edmund. You mean about the man Metherell?

Austin. Yes.

Edmund. I understand some other club has bought him from you. Are

footballers for sale?

Austin. Er--in a sense.

Edmund. And why have you sold him if he's a valuable man?

Austin. He's invaluable. If ever there was a one-man team, that team is

ours. I've seen the others stand around and watch Metherell win matches

by himself. But to-day money is more essential than the man.

Edmund. I'm still puzzled. Is football a business then?

Austin. Of course. That's the worst of burying yourself in London. You

never know anything. Football clubs to-day are limited companies.

Edmund. I fancy I had heard that.

Austin. Well, broadly speaking, and not so broadly either, I am the

limited company that runs Blackton Rovers. You never cared for sport.

I was always keen. In the old amateur days, I played for Blackton while

you went country walks and studied law. Football's always meant a lot to

me. It means life or death to-day.

Edmund. That's a strong way of talking about a game, Austin.

Austin. Life or death, Edmund. Blackton's been my passion. It's not a

town that's full of rich men, and the others buttoned up their pockets.

Employers of labour too, who know as well as I do that football is an

antidote to strikes, besides keeping the men in better condition by

giving them somewhere to go instead of pubs. I've poured money out like

water, but the spring's run dry and other Clubs are richer. They can buy

better players. They bought them from me.

Edmund. Have the men no choice?

Austin. Up to a point. But footballers aren't sentimentalists and rats

desert a sinking ship. The one man who stuck to me was Metherell. He's

a Blackton lad, and he liked to play for his native town. To-day, he's

gone. I made him go for the money I needed. The Club's been losing

matches. We were knocked out of the Cup Tie in the first round. Lose

to-day and Blackton Rovers go down to the second division. My Club in

the second division!

Edmund. Does that matter so much--apart from sentimental reasons?

Austin. It matters this much. That there'll never be another dividend.

The gate money for the second division game's no use to me.

Edmund. But surely, if your public's got the football habit they'll go

on coming.

Austin. Not to a second division team. They'll drink a pint or two less

during the week and travel on Saturdays to the nearest first division

match.

Edmund. So much for their loyalty.

Austin. They don't want loyalty. They want first class football, and if

I can't give it them, they'll go where they can get it. As it is, the

Club's on the brink of bankruptcy, and I'm the Club.

Edmund. Then your men had better win to-day.

Austin. They must.

Edmund. And if--supposing they don't?

Austin. That's why I brought you here. To look into things. I can't face

ruin myself.

Edmund. Ruin? It's as bad as that?

Austin. Oh, I daresay you're thinking me a fool.

Edmund. I think your sense of proportion went astray.

Austin. All my money's in it. I don't care for myself. I had value for

it all the day four years ago when Blackton won the Cup at the Crystal

Palace, but it's been a steady decline ever since. What troubles me is,

it's so rough on the children.

Edmund. Have you told them?

Austin. What's the use? Leo's got no head for business and the girls

are--girls.

Edmund. Yes. Tell me, what are you doing with Leo?

Austin. Doing? Well, Leo's is a decorative personality, and he has a

lung, poor lad. Leo's not made for wear.

Edmund. Rubbish! If he's made you feel that, he's a clever scamp, with a

taste for laziness and a gift for deception.

Austin. Well, I do feel about Leo like a barndoor fowl that has hatched

out a peacock.

Edmund. Peacock! Yes, for vanity. A little work would do the feathers no

harm.

Austin. I can't be hard on a boy with his trouble.

Edmund. I foresee a full week-end, Austin. And I thought I was coming

down for a quiet time in the bosom of my family.

Austin. Yes, we've been great family men, Edmund, you and I.

Edmund (_hastily_). Well, we won't go into that again.

Austin. Yes, we will. We quarrelled over Debussy. Come into the

music-room and I'll play the thing over to you now. If you don't admit

it's great, I'll----

Edmund. We've other matters to discuss, Austin. This isn't the time for

music.

Austin. Yes, it is. Music makes me forget. Some men take to drink. I go

to the piano.

(_Enter Florence and Elsie._)

Elsie. Father, do you want any lunch?

Austin (_looking at watch_). By Jove, yes. Time's getting on. I'll play

that Debussy thing afterwards, Edmund. Coming, girls?

Elsie. No, thank you, father. Neither Flo nor I feel we can sit down to

table with you just yet. We've had ours.

Austin. You've been quick about it. Where's Leo?

Florence. Stuffing himself with cold beef. Men have no feelings.

Edmund. Surely Leo must have a feeling of hunger.

Elsie. It's indecent to be hungry after hearing of father's treachery to

Blackton.

Austin. Treachery!

Florence. Some of my tears fell in the salad bowl, and I hope they'll

poison you.

Edmund. Be careful what you're saying, Florence. Is that the way to talk

to your father?

Florence. No. That's nothing to the way I ought to talk to him.

Edmund. Well, I know if I'd addressed my father like that----

Florence. It's a long time since you had a father to address, Uncle

Edmund. We bring our fathers up differently to-day.

Edmund. If you only knew what your father----

Austin (_taking his arm_). It doesn't matter, Edmund. Come to lunch.

(_Exeunt Edmund and Austin._)

Florence. Yes, it doesn't matter if the Rovers are defeated, but there's

beef and beer in the next room and the heavens would fall if food were

neglected.

Elsie. Oh, I don't care if they are beaten. The Rovers don't interest me

without Metherell.

Florence. I don't believe they ever did. You're no true sportswoman,

Elsie. You always thought more about the man than the game. You might be

in love with Metherell.

Elsie. Yes, I might.

Florence. Perhaps you are.

Elsie. Is there a woman in Blackton who doesn't admire him?

Florence. Oh, I admire him. But that's not loving.

Elsie. No. That isn't loving.

Florence. You sound jolly serious about it.

Elsie. Do you realize that now he's transferred he'll have to live in

Birchester--two hundred miles away?

Florence. Yes, I suppose so.

Elsie. What are our chances of seeing him?

Florence. Once a year or so when Birchester play here, instead of about

every alternate Saturday.

Elsie. I've been seeing him oftener than that.

Florence. Do you mean you've been meeting him?

Elsie (_breaking down on Flo's shoulder, to her great embarrassment_).

Flo, I do love him and I don't care who knows it, and now he'll have to

leave Blackton, and I----

Florence. Steady, old girl. I'm a bit out of my depth myself, but I'll

do my best for you with father.

Elsie (_braced up_). Father wouldn't stop me.

Florence. He might try. Jack isn't quite our class, in a general way of

speaking, is he?

Elsie. Class! What is our class? We're nobodies.

Florence. Still, as things go in Blackton we're rather upper crust,

wouldn't you say?

Elsie. Grandfather began life as a mechanic's labourer.

Florence. Did he? I've never worried about our pedigree, but you

wouldn't think it to look at him. (_Looking at his portrait._)

Elsie. Oh, he made money. One of the good old grinding, saving sort.

But he began a good deal lower down than Jack. Jack's father was an

undertaker.

Florence. An undertaker!

Elsie (_hotly_). Well, I suppose undertakers can have children like

other people.

Florence. Oh, I've no objections

Elsie. I've no objections either.

Florence. I daresay not--to the father. He's dead. But the mother isn't.

Elsie. What's the matter with his mother?

Florence. Haven't you seen her?

Elsie. Jack's shirked introducing me, if you want to know.

Florence. Well, I _have_ seen her, and----

Elsie. Well?

Florence. She's a hard nut to crack.

Elsie. I'll crack her if she needs it. If I want to marry a man, I

marry him. I don't mind telling parents about it, but I don't ask their

permission. That sort of thing went out about the time motor cars came

in.

Florence. Then why haven't you told father before this?

Elsie. Because Jack's old-fashioned and thinks he ought to speak to

father first. He's got a perfectly ridiculous respect for father.

Florence. Father's his employer. _We_ don't think much of father, but I

expect there _are_ people who regard him as quite a big man.

Elsie. That needn't have made Jack a coward. As father's ceased to

employ him perhaps he'll get his out-of-date interview over now. (_She

runs suddenly to window._)

Florence. What's the matter?

Elsie. I'm sure I heard a ring.

Florence. You've got sharp ears. Do you mean to tell me that in this

room you can hear a bell in the kitchen?

Elsie (_opening window_). It might be Jack.

Florence (_following her_). Don't you know whether it is?

Elsie. I can't see any one.

Florence. But I thought people in your case didn't need to see. Don't

you feel his unseen presence in your bones like you feel a thunderstorm?

(_They are both in the window bay. Barnes, the butler, shows in Jack

Metherell. Jack is dark and handsome with traces of coarseness, tall

and of strong appearance, clean-shaven, dressed rather cheaply hut

not vulgarly. A modest fellow, unspoiled by popular acclaim and

simple-minded though successful. He remains near the door, not seeing

the girls. Florence restrains Elsie._)

Barnes. I will let Mr. Whitworth know you are here. Jack. Thank you.

(_Barnes half closes door, then returns._)

Barnes. Mr. Metherell, I was thinking of having a little money on the

team this afternoon. Can I take it from you that it's safe?

Jack. It depends which team you put it on.

Barnes. Why, the Rovers, of course.

Jack. Do you want to win your bet?

Barnes. I do that.

Jack. Then put it on Birchester.

Barnes. Really, Mr. Metherell?

Jack. Really.

(_Barnes pauses, then._)

Barnes. I will inform Mr. Whitworth that you are here.

(_Exit Barnes. Jack watches him close door, then goes to bookcase,

examines books, takes one out and begins to read studiously. Florence

motions Elsie to remain and comes forward._)

Florence. Good-morning, Mr. Metherell.

Jack (_closing book quietly_). Good morning, Miss Florence. Florence.

Are you much of a reader?

Jack. I'm striving to improve my mind.

Florence (_taking the book_). Good gracious, you've got hold of Plato.

Jack. Yes. I have read him in the Everyman Edition, but I see this is a

different translation by a Mr. Jowett.

Florence. How learned you must be.

Jack. Not I, more's the pity. We've two members in the Mutual

Improvement League at our Sunday School who can read Plato in the

original. I wish I could.

Florence. Do you? I'll put it back (_replacing book_). You'll have no

use for Plato in a minute.

Jack. Why not, Miss Florence?

(_Florence laughs and exit, leaving him looking after her. Elsie comes

forward and puls her hands over his eyes._)

Jack. It's Elsie.

Elsie. Yes. It's Elsie. (_Facing him._) Aren't you going to kiss me,

Jack?

Jack. In your father's house?

Elsie. It's as good as any other place.

Jack. No, it isn't. Not till I have asked his leave.

Elsie. You've kissed me in the fields.

Jack. I know. I've compromised with my conscience.

Elsie. Jack, if the rest of you was as antiquated as your conscience,

you'd be a doddering octogenarian instead of the liveliest player in the

League. Have you come now to ask father's leave?

Jack. I've come because he told me to last night. I might ask his leave

though, now. But I think I ought to ask my mother first.

Elsie. They'd better both be told at once. If you're going to

Birchester, I'm coming with you.

Jack. You've heard that then?

Elsie. Yes. Did you hear what I said?

Jack. About coming with me?

Elsie. Yes.

Jack. I'm willing if they are.

Elsie. Who are "they"?

Jack. Your father, and my mother. Suppose the banns go up next Sunday,

we could get married in a month and make one bite of the wedding and the

testimonial do they'll want to give me.

Elsie. I couldn't be ready in a month, Jack.

Jack. Well, I'm ready any time.

(_She kisses him._)

Oh, now Elsie, that's a foul. You know----

Elsie. You didn't kiss me. I kissed you. I do what I like in this house.

Jack. It's a big house, lass. You'll find less breathing space in my

seven-and-six a week house in a row, with my mother in it, and all.

Elsie (_pulling him to the arm-chair and sitting herself on its arm_).

I've thought it all out, Jack. It won't be a house in a row. There are

moors round Birchester, and we're going to live outside the town in a

dinky little cottage where the air will always keep you at the top of

your form, and I shall have a garden to look after and be handy for

the links. I'm going to teach you golf. I shall drop hockey when I'm

married. Married life demands sacrifices.

Jack. Yes. You're going to sacrifice a lot.

Elsie. You're not going to begin all that over again, are you? Do you

want to marry me?

Jack. Like nothing on earth.

Elsie. Then I get you and nothing that I lose counts against that gain.

Jack. You've a fine sweet way of putting things. I just go funny-like

all over and the words won't come. But I love you, lass, I love you.

I'll be a good husband to you.

Elsie. It's heaven to hear you say you love me. I want no sweeter words

to come than those, I don't deserve it, Jack. Who am I? Elsie Whitworth.

Nothing. And you're the grandest, strongest player of your time.

Jack (_rising_). You think too much of football, Elsie.

Elsie. That's impossible.

Jack. You do. Football's as good a way as another of earning a week's

wages, but that's all it is.

Elsie. It's the thing you do supremely well.

Jack. Yes. Now and for a few more years maybe, but I'll be an old man

for football soon.

Elsie. That's why I mean to teach you golf. Don't I tell you I have

thought about it, Jack? You're going to be as brilliant at golf as now

you are at football. I'll never lose my pride in you, your huge, hard

muscles and your clean fit body.

Jack. It's a great thing to be strong and master of your strength.

Elsie. Your splendid strength! Your swiftness and your grace.

Jack. But it's a greater to be clever, and I'd give up all my strength

if I could write a poem like the one your brother wrote in the _Blackton

Evening Times_.

Elsie (_contemptuously_). Leo! That weakling.

Jack. He may be, but he's got a brain.

Elsie. You're twenty times the cleverer.

Jack. Then I'm good for something better than football. I'm up in

football now as high as I can get. I used to dream of being called

the finest player in the League. They've called me that these last two

seasons and my dream's grown bigger. I'm honoured for my play. I'd like

to gain some honour now for work.

Elsie. You've just told me football _is_ work.

Jack. I mean brain work. A footballer's a labouring man. And I want you,

Elsie. I look to you to lead me to the higher path.

Elsie (_dejectedly_). You think I can!

Jack. I know you can. You've got a fancy now for football, but it's not

your real self. You're a cultured woman.

Elsie (_interrupting_). Culture doesn't count.

Jack (_proceeding_). You've gone beyond the things that puzzle me.

You're at the other side. Why, Elsie, there are things in Browning that

I can't make out, and Walter Pater has me beat to atoms.

Elsie. Those aren't the real things, Jack.

Jack. They're real enough to be the things that made me want you. I

could pick and choose from lots of women fit to talk of football to me,

but I'm tired of football. You're the only woman who can talk to me of

other things--and you won't.

Elsie. You're tired of football!

Jack. Not of the game. Sick of the eternal jaw about it.

Elsie. Well, I'm sick of books.

Jack. You can't be that. Books last.

Elsie. Your fame will last. Books aren't the real thing.

Jack. Then what is real?

Elsie. Blood. Flesh and blood. I'd burn every book in this room for the

glory of another rush like yours when you scored your second goal

last Saturday. It may have lasted thirty seconds, but it was worth a

wilderness of books.

Jack. It was worth just half a column in the _Athletic News_.

Elsie. It's worth my love for you. It's not your brain I'm wanting,

Jack. It's you. You're splendid as you are. Don't try to hide behind a

dreary cloud of culture. It's better fun to be alive all over than to

crawl through life with a half-dead body and a half-baked mind.

Jack. Life's not all fun.

Elsie. It isn't, but it ought to be, and for you and me it's going to

be, and if you don't stop looking serious, I'll upset you by kissing you

again.

Jack. Don't do that, Elsie. It isn't right yet.

Elsie. Jack, you've a bilious conscience. It's the only part of you that

isn't gloriously fit.

Jack. Give me till I've seen your father and then perhaps you'll tire of

being kissed a long while sooner than I tire of kissing you.

Elsie It's so stupid to ask father about a thing like that. It's not his

lips you're going to kiss. It's mine.

Jack. I've to satisfy my conscience, Elsie.

Elsie. The poor thing needs a lot of nourishment.

(_Enter Austin and Edmund._)

Don't stint it.

Austin. Good morning, Metherell. Elsie, we've to talk business.

Elsie. Mayn't I stay? Men are so funny when they're serious.

Austin (_holding door_). You would find no entertainment this time.

Elsie (_passing him_). That's all you know about it.

(_Exit Elsie._)

Austin. Sit down, Metherell. Oh, this is my brother, Mr. Edmund

Whitworth.

Edmund (_shaking_). I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr.

Metherell.

(_They sit down, Austin commanding, the room from the club-fender._)

Austin. Very busy that train we came home by last night, Metherell.

Jack. Yes, very full.

Austin. I couldn't get a chance of talking to you. Now, it's about this

match to-day.

Jack. Yes?

Austin. You know how tremendously important it is for Blackton.

Jack. Blackton _'_ull be a second division team next season.

Austin. I hope not, Metherell.

Jack (_without arrogance_). With me playing against them?

Austin. I still hope not. Blackton must not lose today.

Jack. I don't see how they can help it.

Edmund. You've a good opinion of yourself, I notice, Mr. Metherell.

Jack. Blackton Rovers without me aren't a team at all. They're certain

to be beaten.

Austin. You say that as if you don't mind if they are.

Jack. I belong to Birchester now, Mr. Whitworth.

Austin. Come, Metherell, you've belonged to Birchester for half a

day. You belonged to Blackton for five years. This match can make no

difference to Birchester. They're half way up the list. It's critical

for Blackton. You've played all these years for Blackton and you've

thought Blackton all your life. You can't change your allegiance all in

a moment. You can't pretend you'd like to see Blackton go down.

Jack. Oh, I've a fondness for Blackton. I don't deny it.

Austin. Metherell, Blackton must win to-day.

Jack. They might have done if you hadn't transferred me.

Austin. My hand was forced.

Jack. So you told me.

Austin. At heart you're still a Blackton man, Metherell.

Jack. Maybe. But at Football I've signed on to play with Birchester. I

may be just as sorry as yourself to see Blackton go down to-day, but as

centre forward of Birchester United it's my bounden duty to do my best

to send the Rovers down.

Austin. Look here, Metherell, you see the hole I'm in. What am I to do?

Jack. I've no suggestions.

Austin. What about the referee?

Jack. Eh?

Austin. Anything to be done there?

Jack. I don't understand.

Austin. Could I square him?

Jack. Not unless you want to see him lynched.

Austin. Then you're the only hope.

Jack. It's a poor hope if you're looking for anything of that from me.

Austin. I'm asking you to be loyal to Blackton for another day.

Jack. Were you loyal when you transferred me?

Austin. Yes: loyal to Blackton's very existence. Don't play your best

this afternoon. That's all I ask.

Jack. I always play my best.

Edmund. Are you never out of form, Mr. Metherell?

Jack. I play at the top of whatever form I'm in.

Edmund. Couldn't you make it convenient to be in particularly bad form

to-day? After your long journey to and from Birchester yesterday, a

tired feeling's only natural.

Jack. I'm feeling very fit. Do you know you're asking me to sell a

match?

Austin (_firmly_). Yes.

Jack. I couldn't square it with my conscience. I really couldn't, Mr.

Whitworth. I know it means a lot to you, but I'm not that sort, and you

ought to know it.

Austin. Your conscience might be--salved.

Jack. Salved?

Edmund. Yes. Just let us know how much you consider will cover all moral

and intellectual damages, will you?

Jack (_to Austin_). I'm glad it wasn't you who spoke that word.

Austin. I endorse it, Metherell. I told you last night how I stood. The

loss of to-day's match may involve my ruin.

Jack. As bad as that? I'm sorry.

Austin. Man, can't you see I'm not romancing? Do you think I'd come to

you with this if I wasn't desperate?

Jack. It's a pretty desperate thing to do. Suppose I blabbed?

Austin. Yes. There's that. It ought to show you just how desperate I am.

You know, and no one better, how this Club's been run. You know there's

blackguardism in the game, but Blackton hasn't stooped. Whatever other

clubs have done, Blackton has stood for sport, the straight, the honest

game. The Blackton Club's my life's work, Metherell. I might have done a

nobler thing, but there it is. I chose the Club. I gave it life and kept

it living, and the time's come now when I can't keep it living any more.

Twice top of the League and once winners of the Cup. It's had a great

past, Metherell, an honourable past. It's earned the right to live, and

now it's in your hands to kill the Blackton Club and end the thing I've

fostered till it's seemed I only lived for that one thing. It isn't much

to ask. A little compromise to save the Club you've played for all these

years, to save the club and me.

Jack. I cannot do it, Mr. Whitworth.

(_Austin sinks hopelessly into armchair._)

Edmund (_briskly_). Now you referred to your conscience, Mr. Metherell.

My experience is that when a man does that he's open to negotiation.

Jack. Money won't buy my conscience, sir.

Edmund (_half mockingly_). Well, are you open to barter?

Jack. No. The thing I want from you is no more to be bought than my

conscience is.

Austin (_without hope_). You do want something from me, then?

Jack. I want to marry Elsie.

Edmund (_shocked_). My God!

Austin. Does she know? (_Rising._)

Jack. Does she know? She says we're to be married and that's all about

it, but I'm old-fashioned and I want your leave.

Edmund. My niece and a professional footballer!

Austin. Steady, Edmund. Now, Metherell, just let us see where we stand.

You propose to help Birchester to beat Blackton.

Jack. I'll do my best.

Austin. And you think I'll let you ruin me first and marry my daughter

afterwards?

Jack. I won't buy Elsie from you at the price of my professional honour.

Austin. Professional fiddlesticks! The thing's done every day.

Jack. Not by a Blackton lad. I've learnt the game you taught me, Mr.

Whitworth, the straight, clean Blackton game. I'll not forget my school

even at the bidding of the head. I'm not anxious to be suspended for

dishonest play.

Austin. Only incompetents get suspended. You needn't fear. You're

skilful.

Jack. Not at roguery.

Edmund. You're talking straight, Mr. Metherell.

Jack. Yes. It's you that's talking crooked.

(_Enter Elsie._)

Elsie. May I come in now?

Austin. No. We're busy.

Elsie. Thank you. (_Closing door._) You don't get rid of me twice with

that dear old business bogey. I expect Jack's made an awful mess of it.

Has he told you about us, father?

Austin. No. Yes. Go away. We're talking seriously.

Elsie. Yes. You all look very foolish. Is it settled, Jack?

Jack. No.

Elsie. What's the trouble? Is father being ridiculous?

Edmund. Upon my word, Elsie----

Elsie. Oh, that's all right, uncle Ed. It does father no end of good

to be talked to like that. Jack, I find I can be ready in a month after

all, so that's all right.

Edmund. Ready for what, girl?

Elsie. My wedding, uncle. You'd better start thinking about your

present.

Austin. But----

Elsie. Hasn't Jack told you we're to be married?

Austin. He's told me he wants to marry you, but----

Elsie. Then what is there to argue about? Men do love making a fuss

about nothing and fancying themselves important. Come along, Jack.

You're going to take me down to the ground.

Edmund. Well, I'm----

Elsie. Oh, dear no, Uncle. You're not.

(_Elsie goes off with Jack. They reach door._)

CURTAIN.

ACT II

_The office of Blackton Football Club is situated under a stand, the

slope of which forms its roof, down to some eight feet from its floor.

In the perpendicular side are the windows, overlooking the ground. Used

as much for the entertainment of visitors as for office work, the room

contains only a desk with revolving chair, and a sofa to indicate its

titular purpose, and for the rest is a comfortably appointed club-room.

On the walls are sporting prints and, by the desk, a file of posters,

the uppermost advertising the day's match. A door gives access, and a

second door leads to the ambulance-room._

(_Hugh Martin, the Club Secretary, sits at the open desk. Austin

enters._)

Austin. Well, Martin.

Martin. Good afternoon, Mr. Whitworth.

Austin. What do you estimate the gate at? Five hundred pounds?

Martin (_rising_). The returns are not in yet, but hardly that much.

Austin (_looking out of window_). I should call it a twenty thousand

crowd by the looks of it.

Martin (_not looking out_). Not far short. But (_awkwardly_) there's

been a little accident, sir.

Austin. Accident?

Martin. Oh, it's happened before. They rushed the turnstiles on the

shilling side.

Austin. I say, Martin, that's too bad. Just when we need every penny we

can screw.

Martin. About three thousand got in free before the police could master

the rush.

Austin. That Chief Constable's an incompetent ass. He never sends us

enough men.

Martin. Fewer than usual to-day. There's a socialist demonstration on

the recreation ground, and that's taken away a lot of police.

Austin. Idiot! Does he think Blackton people will go to a political

meeting when there's a football match?

Martin. As you say, sir, he's a fool.

Austin (_sitting at desk_). No use claiming for the loss either. Pass

me the cheque-book, Martin. Those people with the mortgage on the

stands threaten to foreclose unless we pay on Monday. I'd a letter this

morning.

Martin (_opening safe and passing cheque-book from it_). Can we meet it,

sir?

Austin. Yes. Metherell's transfer fee is in the Bank.

Martin. That brightens our sky.

Austin. Think so, Martin?

(_Martin replaces Austin at desk, signs cheque, tears it out and then

puts book back in safe._)

Martin. I never thought we should live through the season. And here we

are at the end of it still alive and kicking.

Austin. They'd better kick to some purpose to-day, Martin, or-----

Martin. It'll be all right, sir.

Austin. You're a sanguine fellow. Suppose we lose. Second Division. No

dividends. No dividends, no Club. No Club, no Secretary, Martin.

Martin. Don't talk about it, sir. It's not losing my job. That doesn't

matter. But the thought of Blackton going down is more than I can bear.

Austin. Yes. It's ugly. You're a good fellow, Martin.

Martin. Don't mention it, sir. I love the game.

Austin. The game! Yes. Always the game.

Martin. I often wish this side didn't exist, though it is my bread and

butter.... That's the whistle. They're playing.

Austin. Yes. Didn't you know? They'd begun before I came in here.

Martin (_reproachfully_). Oh, sir!

Austin. Don't let me keep you from your place.

Martin. Aren't you coming?

Austin. No. I shan't see much of this match, Martin.

Martin. When so much depends upon it!

Austin. Yes. That's why.

Martin (_consolingly_). But you forget things when you watch the game.

Austin (_kindly_). Go and forget them, Martin.

(_Enter Florence, in outdoor spring costume, excitedly._)

Florence. Father, aren't you coming? You've missed it all. We've scored

a goal in the first five minutes.

Austin. Scored already! Thank God.

Florence. The most glorious goal you ever saw. Black-ton are playing up

like little heroes. It's the match of the season.

(_Martin slips out._)

Angus is in terrific form. I take back what I said about him. Metherell

himself couldn't do better. He had the Birchester goalee beat to

smithereens. I tell you it's tremendous.

Austin. How's Metherell playing?

Florence. Against us.

Austin (_impatiently_). Yes. But how?

Florence. How does he generally play?

Austin. Like that? He's in form?

Florence. It's worth a guinea a minute to watch him. And you're missing

it.

Austin. I'll go on missing it, Flo.

Florence (_looking through window_). Well, I won't.

(_Exit Florence. Austin sits down in desk-chair, staring at the wall,

blankly._)

Austin. Metherell!

(_Enter from the ambulance-room Dr. Wells, a young sporting doctor,

nice-looking, with dark hair and moustache. He is passing through to the

outer door. Austin starts._)

Oh, it's you, Doctor. You startled me.

Wells. I beg your pardon, Mr. Whitworth.

Austin. My fault for day-dreaming. (_Rising._) Ready for contingencies

in your torture chamber?

Wells. All clear. You look rather like a contingency yourself.

Austin. I'm--I'm nervous.

Wells (_sympathetically_). It's a trying occasion. Don't you keep a

bottle of whisky in that desk?

Austin (_smiling_). Don't you know I do?

Wells (_grinning_). I have some recollection of it. Take my strictly

unprofessional advice and have a good strong nip.

Austin (_at desk cupboard_). Have one yourself?

Wells. No, thanks. I'm going to look out for accidents.

Austin. Ghoul!

Wells. Every man to his trade.

(_Exit Wells. Austin mixes drink. Enter Edmund._)

Edmund. Hullo! That's bad, Austin.

Austin. Doctor's orders, Edmund. Will you?

Edmund. No, thanks.

Austin. How's the game?

Edmund. Rowdy. You're not watching it?

Austin. No. I'm praying for it.

Edmund. So far the gods have heard your prayer.

Austin. Metherell hasn't. I hear he's playing his best game against us.

Edmund. I'm no judge.

Austin. Are you tired of it already?

Edmund. I find it just a trifle wearing. Perhaps I'm tod old to

appreciate a new sensation. The excitement's too concentrated. And the

noise! I'm deafened.

Austin. It's quiet enough in here. Those windows are double.

Edmund. They need to be. Austin, about Elsie.

Austin. Yes?

Edmund. And this footballer. You'll have to put your foot down.

Austin. I don't flatter myself I shall have much to say in the matter.

Edmund. Hang it, you're her father.

Austin. You heard what she said.

Edmund. To my blank astonishment, I did.

Austin. Oh, I'm used to it.

Edmund. Pull yourself together, Austin. You've drifted till your

authority's flouted by your own children.

Austin. You know, Edmund, that sort of talk was all right in our day,

but my children belong to the new generation, and the new generation

regards parental authority as a played-out superstition.

Edmund. Nonsense. Be supine and they'll tread on you. You've only your

own slackness to blame for it if you're flouted.

Austin. That, again, is the view of our time. We're old codgers to-day,

Edmund, you and I.

Edmund. Confound it, Austin, you're not going to take this lying down!

Austin. No. I shall fight the fight of my generation against the next. I

shall lose, of course.

Edmund. You mustn't lose.

Austin. Why should I be an exception to a natural law?

Edmund. Natural law! Natural laziness, you mean. You've simply let your

children get out of hand through sheer weakness, and if you don't care

to exert yourself to save Elsie from a gross _mésalliance_, I will.

Austin. Why's it a _mésalliance_?

Edmund. Good heavens, man--a footballer!

Austin. There spoke the acclimatized Londoner. Black-ton won't be

scandalized like Sevenoaks.

Edmund. Oh, hang your smug imitation democracy! You don't believe that,

Austin.

Austin. I always believe in the inevitable.

Edmund. It's not inevitable, It's incredible. Now, I'll tell you what

I'll do, Austin. I'll take Elsie back with me to London and cure her of

this infatuation with a jolly good round of the theatres and the shops.

Austin. My dear fellow! The theatres where she'll see nothing but

romantic love stories and the shops where she'll go under your nose to

buy her trousseau. Try it, Edmund. You'll be astonished at the result.

Edmund. It seems my _métier_ to be astonished to-day. First I assist

at an attempted bribery, and now it seems I'm to see my niece marry the

incorruptible footballer.

Austin. You're a bachelor. The modern child surprises you. As a father,

I have ceased to be surprised.

Edmund. As a father your idea of your duty is to stand idle while your

daughter makes a sentimental mess of her life. I begin to thank my stars

I'm a bachelor. At least I'm not henpecked by a rebellious family.

Austin. There's no rebellion about it, Edmund. I date from the sixties,

they from the nineties, and we rub along quite peacefully in mutual

toleration of the different attitudes.

Edmund. Tolerating the difference means that you give in to them every

time.

Austin. Not quite.

Edmund. Then you won't give in to Elsie?

Austin. I shall be loyal to my generation, Edmund. She will be loyal to

hers,--and youth will fight for her.

Edmund. That means you'll put up a protest for form's sake and give in

gracefully when you think you've said enough to save your face.

Austin. No. Not if I can help it.

Edmund. Austin, you must help it. The thing's unthinkable. I'll help you

to help it.

Austin. I shall be glad of any assistance you can give me.

(_Austin turns a little wistfully to window._)

Edmund. You think I can't give much.

Austin. Hullo! The game's stopped. I hadn't heard the whistle go.

Edmund. I fancy I did a minute ago, without knowing its significance.

What does it mean?

Austin. Probably an accident. Heaven help us if it's one of our men!

(_Enter Wells and Jack, who is in green-and-white football costume,

soiled on the left side, with his left arm in an emergency sling. Elsie

follows._)

Elsie (_anxiously_). Father, Jack's broken his arm. Wells. Nothing very

serious, Mr. Whitworth. I think it's only a simple fracture.

Elsie. Only!

Wells (_taking Jack across_). Come along in here, Metherell. I'll have

it set before you know where you are.

Austin (_impulsively_). Metherell.

Jack (_as Wells opens door_). Accidents will happen, Mr. Whitworth.

(_Exit Wells with him, closing door._)

Elsie. Doctors are callous beasts. (_She opens door rand goes out with

determination after them._)

Austin (_scoffing_). Accident!

Edmund. Why not? Don't they happen?

Austin. After my proposition?

Edmund. He scorned it.

Austin. Second thoughts. I asked for bad play, but he's thinking of his

reputation and he's broken his arm.

Edmund. Deliberately?

Austin. Yes.

Edmund. Heroic measures, Austin.

Austin. It's the last match of the season. He's all the summer months to

get right in.

(_Elsie returns._)

Elsie. That doctor's turned me out.

Austin. Of course. You've no right in there.

Elsie. I've every right to be where Jack is suffering.

Austin. He can suffer very well without your assistance.

Elsie. You needn't be brutal about it, father.

Austin. I'm not being brutal. The man's a professional footballer.

He accepts the risk of a broken limb as a part of his occupation.

Metherell's not a wounded hero.

Edmund. No. He's simply a workman who'll doubtless receive proper

compensation from his employers.

Elsie. And from me.

Austin. You!

Elsie. This will hurry on our marriage, father. Jack needs attention

now.

Austin. Hasn't he got a mother?

Elsie. No mother could love him as I do. No one can nurse him as

tenderly as I shall.

Austin. Nurse! A broken arm doesn't make an invalid of any one,

especially a man in first-class physical condition.

Elsie. I think it's very cruel of you to belittle Jack's injuries.

Edmund. I wish you would stop calling him Jack.

Elsie. It's his name. He wasn't christened John.

Edmund. I refer to the impropriety of a young lady calling a workman by

his Christian name.

Elsie. As the young lady is going to be married to the workman in the

shortest possible time, I fail to see where the impropriety comes in.

Edmund. That is where we differ, my dear.

Elsie. About impropriety?

Edmund. No. About marriage.

Elsie. Would you rather I lived with him without being married?

Austin. Elsie!

Elsie (_coolly_). Oh, it's all right, father. Uncle deserves a good

shock. He's hopelessly suburban.

Edmund (_pompously_). Elsie, I am older than you and----

Elsie (_pertly_). Yes. That's your misfortune.

Edmund (_angrily_). Will you allow me to speak without interrupting?

(_Austin sits in the armchair._)

Elsie. Yes, if you'll speak sensibly and won't put on side because your

mind's grown old and pompous as well as your body.

Austin. Elsie, I won't have this rudeness to your uncle.

Elsie. My dear father, uncle is being stupid. The only way to combat

stupidity is rudeness. Therefore, I am rude.

Edmund (_humouring her_). I propose to speak sensibly according to my

lights.

Elsie (_under her breath_). Ancient lights.

Edmund (_reasoning_). Now, suppose we do permit you to marry this----

Elsie (_reproducing his reasonable tone_). Be careful, uncle. Talking of

permission is on the border line.

Edmund (_avoiding irritability_). Suppose you marry him, what interests

can you have in common? I grant you he's a handsome specimen of manhood

to-day, but retired athletes always run to seed.

Austin (_self-consciously_). Hem!

Edmund. And apart from the attraction of the flesh, what's left?

Elsie (_cordially_). Oh, you are talking sense this time. It's

difficult, but I shall manage him.

Edmund. Shall you?

Elsie (_confidently_). Oh yes. I couldn't do it if he were as old as

you, because at your age a man's in a groove and sticks in it till he

dies. Jack's not a modern, but he's young enough to learn. It's hardly

credible, but at present he believes in Ruskin and Carlyle and reads

Browning. Well, you know, I can't have a husband with a taste for

Victorianism.

Austin. Then why have him at all?

Elsie. It's a curable disease.

Edmund. He reads Browning!

Elsie. Yes, but you needn't worry about that. I shall make a modern of

him all right.

Edmund. Do you mean to tell me a footballer reads Browning?

Elsie. He can't always be at football. Oh yes. And Plato, only not in

the original.

Edmund. Why, the man's a scholar.

Elsie. Did you think he was illiterate?

Edmund. I'm afraid I have underrated him. Still, that only proves him an

estimable member of his class. It doesn't alter the fact that his class

isn't yours.

Elsie (_hotly_). Class! What do I care for class? Elemental passions

sweep away class distinctions.

Edmund. That's a high falutin' name for a flirtation with a footballer.

Elsie. It's a name I thought you'd understand. Personally I'd say I've

got the sex clutch on and other things don't matter. Any more shots,

uncle?

Edmund. You needn't flatter yourself you've talked me into consenting to

this marriage.

Elsie. Nobody asked you, sir, she said.

Edmund (_angrily_). Nobody----

Elsie (_easily conversational_). Wouldn't it interest you to see how the

game's going, uncle?

Edmund (_relieved_). I think it would. But don't you think you've heard

the last of me.

Elsie (_sympathetically_). No, but you want time to think out a few more

objections.

Edmund. I am going purely out of desire to witness the match.

(_Exit Edmund._)

Elsie (_looking after him_). Poor dear. He tried his best.

Austin (_half rising_). And I am going to try now.

Elsie (_pushing him gently hack into chair and sitting on its arm_). Oh,

I don't mind you. He tried like an outraged relation. You'll try like a

pal.

Austin. No. I'm going to be firm.

Elsie. What a bore.

Austin (_seriously_). You didn't expect me to be pleased about this, did

you?

Elsie (_pouting_). Why not, if I'm pleased? Jack isn't marrying you.

Austin. Nor you, if I can help it.

Elsie. But you can't help it, you know.

Austin. Oh, I'm quite aware the stern parent isn't my game. But as pals,

Elsie----

Elsie (_nestling up to him_). Yes, father, as pals.

Austin. As goose to goose, it's not the thing. Now, frankly, is Jack

Metherell up to our weight?

Elsie. He's above it.

Austin. Above it?

Elsie. Certainly. The condescension's his. He's a better footballer than

ever you were, and you were no fool at football.

Austin. Football isn't everything, Elsie!

Elsie. Well, you play a decent hand at Bridge, but that's not much. Your

golf's rotten. What else do you do well?

Austin (_pushing her aside, and rising_). Really, Elsie!

Elsie (_still on the arm_). Don't say "really." Tell me.

Austin. I hope I'm fairly good at being a gentleman.

Elsie. Doing, I said, not being.

Austin (_humbly_). I--er--play the piano, you know.

Elsie. Yes, but you're not a musician within the meaning of the Act.

You play the piano like a third-rate professional, too good for a

public-house and not good enough for the concert platform, whereas

Jack's football makes him a certainty for the England team in any

international match. You may have more money than he has----

Austin (_glancing at window_). I'm not even sure of that.

Elsie (_triumphantly_). Then you've absolutely nothing on your side

except a stupid and obsolete class prejudice.

Austin. Upon my word, Elsie----

Elsie (_coming to him, gently_). Yes, I know I'm crushing, dear.

Austin. You're pitiless. Youth always is.

Elsie. Not always, father, but you shouldn't try to argue about love.

Austin. I was arguing about marriage.

Elsie (_away from him_). I suppose at your age it's natural to be

cynical about marriage and pretend it's nothing to do with love. And

then of course when you were young it used to be the fashion to mock at

marriage. We take our duties to society seriously to-day.

Austin. Are you proposing to marry Jack from a sense of duty?

Elsie (_wistfully_). You'll be awfully proud of your grandchildren,

father. They'll be most beautiful babies.

Austin. You look ahead, young woman.

Elsie. It's just as well I do. You're still worrying about a thing I

settled weeks ago.

Austin. Then why didn't you tell me weeks ago?

Elsie. I hadn't told Jack then.

(_Wells opens door, and enters with Jack, whose arm is in a splint and

sling._)

Wells (_entering_). You'd better go straight home now. Never mind about

the match. I want you to avoid excitement for a awhile.

Jack. The match doesn't excite me.

Wells. Then you can leave it without regret.

Jack (_indicating his costume_). In these?

Wells. I'll go round to the dressing-room and bring your clothes here if

you'll trust me not to pick your pockets.

Jack. There's nothing to pick. I've more sense than to take money into a

dressing-tent.

Austin. Can't you trust the others, Metherell?

Jack (_drily_). Yes, so long as they're not tempted.

Wells. I won't be long. (_Exit._)

Elsie (_watching Wells resentfully till he goes_). Did he hurt you much,

Jack?

Jack. Not to speak of.

(_Austin watches her scornfully._)

Elsie. Oh, you're brave. But you shall come to no more harm. I'll see

you home safely.

Austin (_sarcastically, indicating door of the ambulance-room_). You'll

find cotton wool in there.

Elsie. What for?

Austin. To wrap him up in.

Elsie. Don't be spiteful, father.

Austin. Good heavens, girl, a broken arm is nothing.

(_Jack sits wearily._)

Elsie. Except that the arm happens to be Jack's.

Austin. The civilized world will gasp at the great event.

Elsie. The athletic world certainly will. It's all very well for you to

joke. Your arm's not hurt. It's all a gain to you. If Blackton don't

win with only ten men against them, they deserve shooting. This accident

means a lot.

Austin. I know what it means--better than you do. (_Looking at Jack._)

Jack (_jerking his head up_). What's that?

Austin. As you tactfully remarked, Metherell, accidents will happen.

Jack (_rising_). Don't you believe it was an accident?

Elsie. What else could it be? Do you think he broke his arm for fun?

Jack (_straight at Austin_). It was an accident.

Austin. No, my lad. It was a bargain.

Jack. I made no bargain.

Austin (_sneering_). But you broke your arm.

Jack. By accident.

Austin. A singularly opportune coincidence.

Elsie. Father, what do you mean?

Austin. You'd better ask Metherell that.

Elsie (_in puzzled appeal_). Jack!

Jack. I'll say nothing.

Elsie. Then what am I to think?

Jack. Think what you like.

Elsie. I think you're a sportsman, Jack, and----

Austin. I've known a sportsman do a bigger thing than break his arm for

a woman.

Elsie (_suspiciously_). A woman! What woman?

Austin. You, my dear. And, as you said, Blackton are safe to win now.

(_Wells, entering with Jack's clothes and boots, overhears Austin._)

Wells. I'm not so sure of that, Mr. Whitworth. It's anybody's game. The

score's one all.

Austin (_startled_). Birchester have scored!

Wells. Yes. Didn't you know? I'll look after Metherell. You're missing a

good game.

Elsie. Then you'd better go and watch it, Dr. Wells.

Wells (_slightly surprised_). I will when I've helped Metherell to

change.

Jack. I'm in no hurry. Don't put yourself about for me. Half time _'_ull

do.

Wells. Well, it can't be far off that now. (_Putting Jack's clothes

over chair._) I should like to see something of this match. Is the arm

painful?

Jack. It's sharpish.

Wells (_by desk_). Pull yourself together with a dose of this. (_Lifting

whisky bottle._)

Jack. No, thanks. I'm a teetotaller.

(_Austin is lighting a cigar._)

Wells (_authoritatively_). And I'm a doctor, man.

Jack. That doesn't help my principles.

Wells. Oh, all right. If you like to be stubborn. Are you coming, Mr.

Whitworth? (_Crossing to door._)

Elsie. Yes. Do go, father. They'll be expecting to see you outside.

Austin (_grim_). Yes--I'm going--to show them I can smile. Come along,

Doctor.

(_Exeunt Wells and Austin._)

Elsie. Now, Jack. What's this all about?

Jack. Your father's making a mistake.

Elsie. About what?

Jack (_exasperated_). It's a confidential matter, Elsie.

Elsie. That means there's something you're afraid to tell me.

Jack. I'm not afraid. He spoke to me in private, and it's giving him

away.

Elsie. You can't give him away to me. I've lived at home too long for

that.

Jack. I can't abuse his confidence.

Elsie. Are you going to talk about your conscience again? Father said

you broke your arm for my sake and I want to know what it means.

Jack. But I didn't, Elsie. It was an accident.

Elsie. He thought not.

Jack. Yes. He's wrong.

Elsie. Why should he think you did it intentionally? Jack (_sullenly_).

Ask him.

Elsie. He's just told me to ask you. Now stop being absurd, Jack, and

tell me all about it.

Jack (_reluctantly_). I told him we wanted to be married--

(_Elsie nods, smiling approval._)

--and he offered to strike a bargain. He wants Blackton to win, so I was

to play a rotten game for Birchester.

Elsie. And you couldn't do it.

Jack. No.

Elsie (_enthusiastically_). No. You couldn't play badly if you tried,

and so you broke your arm instead, for me. Jack, if I was proud of you

before, I could worship you now. (_Patting the sling._) Your arm, your

poor, hurt arm, mangled for me. My hero, my lover and my king.

Jack (_disgustedly_). You think that too!

Elsie. Think it! I know it. Don't pretend. It's too late now for

modesty.

Jack. Modesty! Don't you see if I'd done that, forgotten my

sportsmanship and sold a match for my private gain, I'd deserve to be

kicked round the county?

Elsie. No. I don't see it. You've hurt yourself for my sake, and that's

enough to make of me the proudest woman in the land.

Jack. It's enough to prove me dishonest if it were true. Elsie

(_touching the arm_). Isn't that true?

Jack. Don't I tell you that's an accident?

Elsie. You've never had an accident before.

Jack. Not a serious one.

Elsie. No. You're too great a master of the game. Accidents happen to

the careless and incompetent.

Jack. Then I must be both. I fell and my arm twisted under me.

Elsie. And you really didn't do it on purpose?

Jack (_hurt_). Elsie, don't you believe me?

Elsie. It's so beastly to have to. I thought you were a perfect player,

and you have an accident; and I thought you were a perfect lover, and

you've been afraid to prove your love.

Jack (_stirred up_). Elsie, there are twenty thousand folk about this

ground to-day and some of them have come to see the match, but more to

see me play an honest game. They're just a football crowd, but there

isn't a man upon this ground to-day but knows Jack Metherell is

straight. It's left for you to say I ought to be a crook. You're great

at golf and hockey. Is that the way you play the game?

Elsie. Forgive me, Jack. I did want things to be right for us.

Jack. At any price?

Elsie. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking of the game. I only thought of you.

Jack. I know. But I want things to be right and rightly right.

Elsie (_smiling_). And now they are.

Jack (_puzzled_). Your father----

Elsie. We've only to let him go on thinking you did it on purpose.

Jack. But I didn't.

Elsie (_soothingly_). I know. _I_ know it was pure accident. But he

doesn't.

Jack. He must be told.

Elsie. I thought you wanted his consent to our marriage

Jack. I do.

Elsie. Then let him think you've kept the bargain he proposed.

Jack. Let him think I'm dishonest?

Elsie. What was he? What does it matter what he thinks if I know the

truth?

Jack. He's got to know the truth. If he'd have me as a scoundrel for

your husband, he should be glad to have me as an honest man. (_Smiling

sourly._) My arm's broke either way.

Elsie. I don't care tuppence for his consent.

Jack. It's not the square thing to get married without.

Elsie. Oh, leave him to me.

Jack. You bustle him so. It's not respectful, Elsie.

Elsie. Well, you needn't take him under your wing as well. It's not the

custom in this family to split hairs about filial piety. I'll make it

all right, Jack.

Jack. It's my job, Elsie.

Elsie. It's our job, and you've had your innings. Now it's mine. But I'm

going to take you home first to your mother.

Jack. But my mother doesn't know about you, yet.

Elsie (_drily_). It's time I made her acquaintance.

Jack (_doubtfully_). I don't know what she'll say.

Elsie. We'll find out when she says it. You think a great deal of your

mother, Jack.

Jack. My father's dead. She's both to me. That's why I'm anxious.

Elsie. Anxious! But your mother wouldn't stop us, Jack.

Jack (_doubtfully_). You will be careful with her, Elsie.

Elsie. Careful?

Jack. Yes. Not like you go on with your father. She's used to my way.

(_She has his unhurt arm, urging him to door, when it opens and Austin,

Florence and Leo enter._)

Austin. Still here, Metherell!

Elsie. I'm just going to take him home.

Austin (_to Jack_). Wasn't the doctor going to help you into your

clothes? (_To Leo and Florence._) Where is Wells? Have either of you

seen him?

Leo. Last seen disappearing in the direction of the bar with an eminent

London solicitor.

Elsie. Oh, never mind him. Jack's clothes can follow. We'll take a taxi.

Austin. But----

Elsie. Come along, Jack.

(_Exeunt Elsie and Jack._)

Leo. I say, father, it's a jolly rough game. This must be one of the

referee's slack days or he'd pull Angus up sharp.

Austin (_genially_). The score's two--one for Blackton, my boy.

Florence. Blackton play against the wind next half.

Austin (_confidently_). The match is all right. I've something else to

talk about to you two. You saw Metherell and Elsie?

Leo (_grinning_). Yes. It's a case.

Austin. What?

Leo (_the grin fading_). Well, isn't it?

Austin. So you know.

Leo. I've got eyes.

Austin. You take it philosophically.

Leo. I don't see that it matters how I take it.

Austin. To my mind it matters considerably. He'll be your brother-in-law

if he marries her.

Leo. That had occurred to me.

Austin. Don't you mind?

Leo. I don't mind. Metherell's a stupendous nut at football.

Austin. I understood football didn't interest you.

Leo. Merely academically.

Austin. It's really far more your concern than mine, you know, Leo. In

the natural course of things Elsie's husband will be your brother-in-law

for a longer period than he'll be my son-in-law. Yours too, Flo.

Florence. Yes. (_Pause._)

Austin (_exasperated_). Well? Have neither of you anything to say?

Florence (_rather bored_). Not much in my line, dad.

Leo. Nor in mine. As I'm her brother I can't cut the other fellow out

and marry her myself. I'm rather thankful, too. Elsie takes a lot of

stopping when she's got the bit between her teeth.

Austin. I don't get much help from you.

Florence. Why should you?

Leo. It's no use jibbing, father. Much easier to give them your blessing

and a cheque.

Austin. It is always easiest to give way, Leo.

Leo. Yes. Isn't it?

Austin (_wildly_). Good heavens, do you young people care about nothing?

Leo. We're tremendously in earnest about a lot of things, only

they're not the things you're in earnest about. There are fashions in

shibboleths just as much as in socks, and you're a little out of date in

both.

Austin. Possibly. But blood is still thicker than water, Leo. Metherell

is a man of the people and----

Leo. Oh, my dear father, don't talk about the people as if they

inhabited an inferior universe. The class bogey is one of the ghosts

we've laid to-day.

Austin. Indeed. I'd an idea it was rather rampant.

Leo. I believe it used to be. As a matter of fact, I do object to

Metherell.

Austin. Oh! You have some sense left.

Florence. I don't. I only wish I was in Elsie's shoes.

Leo. Was I speaking, Flo, or were you?

Florence. You were, too much.

Leo. I object theoretically on aesthetic grounds because of the destined

fatness of the retired footballer. But I have Elsie's assurance that

Metherell's a teetotaller and I trust her to give him a lively enough

time to keep him decently thin, so that practically my objection falls

to pieces.

Austin. Leo, I didn't expect much help from you, but upon my word your

cynicism is disgusting.

Leo. I expect, you know, that's pretty much what grandfather thought of

you.

(_Enter Elsie and Jack._)

Hullo! are there no taxis?

Elsie (_angry_). I think every taxi in the town is outside the ground,

but the men are too keen on getting a free sight of the game from the

roofs of their cabs to take a fare.

Florence. It's a sporting town, Blackton.

Leo. I should have thought they'd take it as an honour to drive

Metherell home.

Jack (_bitterly_). Not in the Birchester colours.

Leo (_sarcastically_). Sporting town, Blackton,

Elsie (_at white heat_). They're beasts. Beasts. They jeered. They're

glad he's hurt.

Jack. That's what you've done for me, Mr. Whitworth. I'm laughed at in

Blackton. Last Saturday I was their idol, and now----

Austin. You've done it for yourself, my boy.

Jack (_hotly_). You transferred me.

Austin. I meant the broken arm, not the broken idol. Jack

(_scornfully_). Do you still think I did it purposely? Austin. I don't

think, Metherell. I know. And I'm very much obliged to you. The chances

are it's won the match.

Jack (_sulkily_). It was an accident.

Austin (_playing his last card_). Oh, you needn't keep that up before

the family. That reminds me. (_Turning to them._) Leo, Florence, this

is your future brother-in-law, Jack Metherell, the sporting footballer,

who's sold a match to buy my consent to his marrying Elsie.

(_He watches Leo and Florence for the effect. Jack steps forward, but

Elsie stops him._)

Elsie. Hush, Jack.

Florence (_coldly_). I don't believe it, father. That consenting

business went out with the flood.

Leo (_to Jack_). Did you ask my father's consent?

Jack. Yes.

Leo. It's just credible, Flo.

Florence. In England? In the twentieth century? Leo. These quaint old

customs linger. Half the world doesn't know how the other half thinks.

Austin (_who has been looking on amazed_). But aren't you horrified?

Leo. At his asking? No. Merely interested in the survival of an

archaism.

Austin. At his selling a match, man!

Leo. A man who would ask papa is capable of anything.

Elsie. He's not capable of dishonesty.

Austin. Oh, you're blind with love.

Elsie. I have his word.

Austin (_scoffing_). His word!

Elsie. Yes. Jack Metherell's word. The word of the man I'm going to

marry.

Austin (_indicating Jack's arm_). Deeds speak louder than words.

Jack (_with resolution_). Yes, Mr. Whitworth, they do. You think you've

won this match. We'll see.

Elsie (_frightened_). Jack, what are you going to do?

Jack. Play. Play for Birchester as I've never played for Blackton. I'll

show him if I sold the match.

Leo. No. I say. You mustn't do that with a broken arm.

Jack. Yes. Broken arm and all.

Leo. It's madness. Look here, I believe you. So does Elsie.

Florence. And I.

Leo. We all do, except father, and I assure you he's subject to

hallucinations. Thinks he can play the piano. Thinks my poetry's bad.

Thinks you're a rotter. All sorts of delusions.

Jack (_stubbornly_). Birchester must win. I'm going on that field to

show them all what football is.

(_As he speaks Wells and Edmund enter._)

Wells (_with calm authority_). I think not, Metherell.

Jack. Out of my way, Doctor.

Wells. I forbid it.

Jack. Much I care for your forbidding.

Wells. One moment, Metherell. The play is extraordinarily rough. It's

Blackton's game to lame their opponents.

Edmund. More like a shambles than a game.

Wells (_to Austin_). The referee is strangely kind to Blackton, Mr.

Whitworth.

Austin. Oh?

Jack (_suspiciously_). What? What's that you said?

Wells. I say if I were referee I'd have ordered off half the Blackton

team for rough play. This is no match for a damaged man, Metherell.

Jack. So you did try the referee, Mr. Whitworth.

Austin. I don't understand you.

Jack. Don't you? Well, rough or smooth, I'm going through it now. (_To

Wells._) Thanks for your warning. (_To Austin._) And I warn _you_ that

referee had best be careful now, or I'll report him.

Elsie (_holding him_). For my sake, Jack.

Jack (_gently shaking her off_). It is for your sake, Elsie, not for

his. His consent's nothing to me after this. My record's going to be

clean.

(_Exit Jack._)

Austin (_rubbing his hands_). Ah! Splendid. Edmund, I've brought you

down from town for nothing. The match is ours.

Edmund (_drily_). Then I can devote my undivided attention to the

problem of my niece. But why's the match yours?

Austin. Metherell is kind enough to give it us. An injured player is a

nuisance to his side--no use and only in the way.

Elsie. You don't know Jack.

Austin. Oh yes, I do. You think he's a hero. I know he's a fool.

Elsie. Then he's an honest fool, and----

Austin. I haven't time to argue the point now. I want a word with the

referee before the game recommences. (_Going._)

Elsie. So Jack was right. You did bribe the referee!

Austin. Elsie, if you don't want us all to starve, you'll keep a tight

hold of your tongue.

Leo. Starve!

Elsie. Starve! What----

Austin. Oh, ask your uncle.

Elsie. I haven't time. I'm going to Jack's home to see that all's

prepared for him.

Austin. Oh, go to---- Go where you like.

Elsie. I usually do.

(_Exit Austin._)

Edmund. Now, Elsie, about this footballer.

Elsie (_moving_). I shall be rather busy turning his bedroom into a

hospital for the next hour, uncle.

Edmund. You're to do nothing so compromising.

Elsie (_scornfully_). Compromising!

Edmund. If you insist on going, I shall come with you.

Elsie. You will look funny in Elizabeth Street.

Edmund. I prefer to look ridiculous than that you should look

indiscreet.

Leo (_at window, crossing_). There's the whistle. Come along, Flo.

Florence. Yes. They're playing.

(_Exeunt Florence and Leo._)

Elsie. You mean to come?

Edmund. I don't mean you to go alone.

Elsie. I wish you were in London, uncle. Your intentions are so good.

CURTAIN.

ACT III

_At 41 Elizabeth Street the combined kitchen and living-room opens

directly to the street, the street door being centre, with the window

next to it. Through the window the other side of the drab street is

seen. A door leads to the stairs, while another gives access to the

scullery. The room is fairly comfortable. A handsome presentation clock

is on the mantel over the fireplace. The plate-rack is well furnished.

Rocking-chair by fireplace. Sofa under window, behind which is a plant

on a stand. Table round which three Old Women sit at tea. Mrs. Wilmot

and Mrs. Norbury, as visitors, wear outdoor clothes and bonnets, of

which they have loosened the strings. Mrs. Metherell has grey hair,

a small person, and an indomitable will. She is too hearty to be

ill-natured, but she is mistress of her house and knows it. She wears

her after-work dress of decent black. The remains of a substantial meal

are on the table. Smoke-blackened kettle on fire._

Mrs. Wilmot (_sighing_). Eh, yes. Elizabeth Street isn't what it was.

Mrs. Metherell. It's not the street, Amy, it's the people in it.

Mrs. Norbury. It used to be known for a saving street when I first came

to live here. Every house had a bank-book.

Mrs. Wilmot. And there's more money coming into the street to-day than

there was then.

Mrs. Norbury. And going out. They spend more in an ordinary week than

ever me and my old man spent in a holiday week one time, and if they

don't spend, they gamble, and nothing to show for it all at the finish.

Mrs. Wilmot. Yes, and come begging off their mother as soon as they fall

sick or out of work. And that uppish with it all!

Mrs. Norbury. Do you think I can get my girls to stay at home and

give me a lift with the house of an evening? Not they. They've always

something on that's more important than me. I'm nobody. And the money

those girls spend on their clothes!

Mrs. Wilmot. Time was when a man _'_ud come straight home when he'd

finished work and be satisfied with doing a bit in his garden. Most he'd

ever think of, barring Saturday night of course, was one night a week at

his club. Nowadays it's every night the same.

(_Mrs. Metherell moves impatiently._)

Mrs. Norbury. I know. You did know where to lay your hand on them once,

but there's no telling where they get to now.

Mrs. Wilmot. It's all these picture shows and music halls.

Mrs. Metherell (_roughly_). It's all your own fault, Amy.

Mrs. Wilmot. Why?

Mrs. Metherell. You let them put upon you.

Mrs. Norbury. I suppose you don't?

Mrs. Metherell. Our Jack doesn't carry on that road.

Mrs. Wilmot. He'll have it out of you yet. He's quiet and deep.

Mrs. Metherell (_confidently_). He's safe enough.

Mrs. Wilmot. Till he breaks out.

Mrs. Metherell. He's never broken yet.

Mrs. Norbury. You're lucky, then.

Mrs. Metherell. It isn't luck. It's the way you go about it with them.

Mrs. Norbury (_enviously_). Yours gets good money, too.

Mrs. Metherell. And I see it all. We've a use for a bank-book in this

house.

Mrs. Wilmot. I wish I saw the half of what mine get. Always crying

out for more, but not to give it me. Some of them wouldn't be happy if

they'd their own motor-car.

Mrs. Metherell. Yes. That's the way. When I was young a man could start

poor and end rich. He'd save and stick to what he got. These lads to-day

_'_ull never rise. They're too busy spending what they have. My Jack

knows a game worth two of that. He's improving his mind. His bedroom's

full of books. Fitting himself to rise, Jack is.

Mrs. Norbury. There are a few like that. They're rare and scarce.

(_Knock at street door,_)

(_She rises._) I'm nearest.

Mrs. Metherell (_rising_). Sit you still. (_Crosses and opens door._)

(_Elsie and Edmund are there._)

Edmund. Mrs. Metherell?

Mrs. Metherell (_gruffly_). Yes?

(_Immediately on the "Yes," Elsie enters past her._)

Edmund. May we come in?

Mrs. Metherell. Looks as if you were in.

(_Edmund enters hesitatingly._)

Elsie. Have you heard about Jack's accident?

(_Mrs. Wilmot and Mrs. Norbury remain seated, eyeing Elsie's clothes._)

Mrs. Metherell (_closing door calmly_). Yes. There was a special out.

They get papers out for anything nowadays.

Elsie (_indignantly_). You take it very easily.

Mrs. Metherell. He'll be looked after. There's a doctor on the ground.

Edmund (_politely awkward_). Perhaps I ought to introduce myself, Mrs.

Metherell. My name is Whitworth--Mr. Austin Whitworth's brother. This

is Miss Whitworth.

Mrs. Metherell (_with some anxiety_). Is Jack hurt worse?

Elsie (_gravely_). Not that we _know_ of.

Mrs. Wilmot (_rising_). I think we'd best be going. Mrs. Metherell. No.

It's all right.

Mrs. Norbury (_rising and tying bonnet-strings_), I can see we're not

wanted. We'll be seeing you again before you flit to Birchester.

Mrs. Metherell (_by door with them_). Many a time. We don't go yet.

(_Opening door._)

Mrs. Wilmot. Good-bye.

Mrs. Metherell. Good-bye.

(_Exeunt Mrs. Wilmot and Mrs. Norbury. Mrs. Metherell closes door and

turns to Elsie._)

Now, what is it? If it's bad news I can stand it.

Elsie. Is Jack's bed prepared?

Mrs. Metherell (_righteously indignant_). Jack's bed was made at eight

o'clock this morning. Do you take me for a slut?

Elsie. Oh yes, but he'll need special nursing, and the room--which is

his room? (_Looking at doors left and right._)

Mrs. Metherell (_drily_). His room's upstairs.

Elsie. I'm going to see that it's right.

Mrs. Metherell. His room's my job.

Elsie. Yes, yes. I know. But I must make sure. Don't you realize he's

gone on playing with a broken arm?

Mrs. Metherell. He was always a fool. But he's not so soft as to take to

his bed for a damaged arm.

Elsie (_wildly_). Anything may have happened. Complications. Fever. I'm

going to his room. Which is it, please?

Mrs. Metherell (_guarding the door_). You're not going. Elsie. I am.

Please don't be stupid, Mrs. Metherell. Edmund. Elsie!

Mrs. Metherell. Do you think I'll have a girl I've never set eyes on

before ferreting round my house?

Elsie. But--oh, you tell her, uncle. (_Darts past Mrs. Metherell and

exit._)

Mrs. Metherell (_calling after her_). Here, you come back. Cheek!

Edmund. I think perhaps in the circumstances, Mrs. Metherell----

Mrs. Metherell (_with the door handle in her hand_). What circumstances?

Edmund. Don't you know about my niece?

Mrs. Metherell. I know she's a forward hussy, like most young girls

to-day. That's all I know.

Edmund. Then I must explain.

Mrs. Metherell (_glancing off_). You'd better.

Edmund. You see, she and your son are engaged to be married.

Mrs. Metherell (_pausing, astonished, then closing door_). It's the

first I've heard of it.

Edmund (_pleased to find her hostile_). Perhaps I ought rather to say

they think they're engaged.

Mrs. Metherell. No. You oughtn't. Jack doesn't think he's tied to any

woman till he's told me first and got my leave.

Edmund (_delighted_). Ah, now that's quite splendid, Mrs. Metherell. I'm

glad to find that you agree with me.

Mrs. Metherell. In what?

Edmund. In opposing the engagement.

Mrs. Metherell. Why do you?

Edmund (_easily_). Well, on grounds, shall we say, of general

unsuitability.

Mrs. Metherell. I don't oppose. (_Sitting in rocking-chair._)

(_Edmund remains standing._)

Edmund. I understood----

Mrs. Metherell. I don't know owt about the girl. She's made a bad start

with me, but she's excited and I'll give fair play. She may be good

enough for Jack. I cannot tell you yet. What makes you think she isn't?

Edmund. I didn't exactly think that.

Mrs. Metherell. What did you think? Out with it. You're her uncle, you

know more about the girl than I can.

Edmund. Well, the fact is I don't consider she would be a suitable wife

for your son.

Mrs. Metherell. That's what you said before. I want to know why not. Has

she a temper?

Edmund (_on his dignity_). Certainly not.

Mrs. Metherell. Flirts then? Not steady? Extravagant?

Edmund. No, no.

Mrs. Metherell. Well, is she deformed or does she drink?

Edmund. Good heavens, woman, no.

Mrs. Metherell. If you won't tell me what's wrong with her, I must find

out for myself.

Edmund. There is nothing wrong with her.

Mrs. Metherell. Then, where's your objection?

Edmund. My objection, stated explicitly, is---- (_Hesitating._)

Mrs. Metherell. Yes? Go on.

Edmund. I find it rather difficult to explain to you.

Mrs. Metherell. I've a thick skin.

Edmund (_desperately_). My niece's training and upbringing do not make

her a fit wife for your son, Mrs. Metherell.

Mrs. Metherell. Did you make a mess of her upbringing?

Edmund. No, but----

Mrs. Metherell. How did you bring her up?

Edmund. As a lady.

Mrs. Metherell. Then she's handicapped for life. But I have seen some

grow out of it.

(_Enter Elsie. She has a towel over her arm._)

Elsie. Mrs. Metherell, will you come upstairs a minute?

Mrs. Metherell. What for?

Elsie. We ought to have hot water ready and I can't find the bath-room.

Mrs. Metherell. You'd have a job to find one in Elizabeth Street.

Elsie (_blankly_). How do you get hot water?

Mrs. Metherell (_drily_). You heat it.

(_Edmund stands, looking on._)

Elsie (_crossing to fireplace and making for kettle_). Then I'll take

this.

Mrs. Metherell (_rising and getting kettle first_). That's for his tea.

(_Glancing at clock, kettle in hand._) I'll make it too. He always comes

in hungry from a match. (_She replaces kettle, takes tea-pot from table,

empties the used tea-leaves behind the fire, fills generously from

canister on mantel and makes tea, replacing kettle and leaving tea-pot

on the hob._)

Elsie. Oh, what have you got for him? He'll need nourishing.

Mrs. Metherell. There's a bit of steak-pie in the cupboard left over

from dinner. He'll have it cold.

Elsie. But meat is so indigestible with tea, and he's an invalid.

(_Edmund sits on sofa._)

Mrs. Metherell. Eh, stop moithering, lass. You don't know owt about it.

(_Suddenly noticing._) What's that over your arm?

Elsie. Oh, I'm sorry. It was upstairs.

Mrs. Metherell. That's my towel when you've done with it. (_Takes it,

then surprised._) Where did you get this from?

Elsie. The bedroom.

Mrs. Metherell. That's one of my best towels. It isn't out of Jack's

room.

Elsie. I've arranged the front bedroom for him.

Mrs. Metherell (_angrily_). I'd have you to know that's my room.

Elsie. The other is such a cheerless, poky little place. It's dark,

there's no fireplace, no proper carpet, nothing but a camp-bed and a

second-hand bookstall.

Mrs. Metherell. It's good enough for him.

Elsie. Nothing but the best is good enough for a man who plays football

like Jack.

Mrs. Metherell. Football's one thing. Home's another. He's at home here.

Do you think he sleeps in the best bedroom?

Elsie. He must have the best-lighted room just now.

Mrs. Metherell. So I'm to turn out for him, am I?

Elsie. That isn't asking very much. I don't believe you care for him at

all. How can you sit at home when he's playing football?

Mrs. Metherell. Custom's everything. (_Sitting in rocking-chair._)

I'm used to my men being before the public. Jack's father was a public

man--an undertaker, (_Edmund winces_) and I've known him have as many as

six funerals on a Saturday afternoon, but I didn't go to the cemetery

to see he buried them properly, and I reckon it's the same with Jack.

He can kick a ball without my watching him. (_Changing tone._) And now

perhaps you'll tell me what you mean by interfering in my house?

Elsie (_to Edmund_). Haven't you told her, uncle?

Edmund. Oh yes. I told her.

Elsie (_smilingly sure of herself_). Well, Mrs. Metherell, will I do?

(_Standing before her._)

Mrs. Metherell (_still sitting_). You said yourself just now that

nothing but the best is good enough for Jack, so you'll excuse my being

particular. I've been asking your uncle about you and he tells me you're

a lady, born and bred.

Elsie. You mustn't blame me for my relations, Mrs. Metherell.

Mrs. Metherell. Nay, I don't. Mine's a respectable family, but there's a

Metherell doing time at this moment, and another to my certain knowledge

who ought to be. But this is where it comes in. If you're going to be

Jack's wife, you've to know your way about a house.

Elsie (_agreeing_). Yes.

Mrs. Metherell. Your father _'_ull keep a servant, I suppose.

Elsie. Oh, but I do my share. Servants require a lot of management.

Mrs. Metherell (_dryly_). I'll take your word for it. I never had any.

And Jack _'_ull have none, either.

Elsie. I didn't expect it.

Mrs. Metherell (_graciously_). You may be handier than you look. I'll

try. Those pots want washing. Let me see you shape.

(_Elsie eagerly begins to put the used cups together._)

There's a tray. (_Pointing to plate-rack._) The sink's in yonder.

(_Pointing._)

Edmund (_protesting_). Really, Mrs. Metherell---- (_He rises._)

Elsie. It's all right, uncle. (_The tray is loaded and she lifts it._)

In there, Mrs. Metherell? (_Starting to go._) Mrs. Metherell. Yes.

(_Edmund opens door. Elsie is going through._)

That'll not do. You won't have a man about the place to wait on you.

Close that door, Mr. Whitworth, and let me see her get out by herself.

(_Edmund closes it, and comes away. Elsie tries to open it, the tray is

troublesome and the pots slip together on it. Mrs. Metherell rises and

crosses rapidly._)

Those are my cups, you know. Here, give it to me. (_Takes tray and exit,

opening door with the ease of familiarity._) Elsie. I'm sorry, Mrs.

Metherell. But I can learn. Mrs. Metherell (_off_). Maybe. You've shown

willing. (_She closes door from outside._)

Edmund. Come away, Elsie. You've seen enough of the Metherell standard

to show you it will never do.

Elsie (_her confidence a little shaken, but still fighting_). I shall

alter the standard.

Edmund. It's fixed. You can't alter it. It's impossible. Elsie. The

modern eye is blind to impossibilities. Have you ever been to an Ideal

Home Exhibition?

Edmund. A what?

Elsie. They show you little houses fitted up with the cutest dodges for

saving labour. I know Mrs. Metherell will have to make her home with

us, but it'll be a very different home from this. You can credit me with

some imagination.

Edmund. I do, if you think Mrs. Metherell will ever believe her house

is clean unless she or some one else has drudged in it all day. Seeing's

believing, and you can't see the dust fly in a vacuum cleaner.

Elsie. She'll have to use her common sense.

Edmund. The scrubbing brush survives in spite of common sense.

(_Enter Jack, dressed as Act I., left arm in splint. He opens and enters

without knocking, but he hasn't time to get his cap off before Elsie is

with him._)

Elsie. You're safe.

Jack. And sound, too, but for this. (_Glancing at his arm._)

Elsie (_hysterically_). Thank God.

Edmund. Is the match over?

Jack. Three--two for Birchester.

Edmund (_distressed_). Birchester have won!

Jack. I won the match for Birchester, if it gives you any satisfaction

to know it. I haven't been a man. I've been a miracle.

Elsie. You always were.

Jack. I've only done my human best before to-day. To-day I've been a

superman, a thing inspired, protected guarded by a greater mastery than

I have ever known. It wasn't football as it is in life. It's been the

football of my dreams.

Edmund. It makes you talk.

Jack. I'm still intoxicated with the glamour of that game.

Edmund. Yes, Metherell, success is sweet. But somebody is suffering for

this.

Elsie. Who?

Edmund. If Birchester have won, Blackton have lost.

Elsie. For an outsider, you take it seriously.

Edmund. I take it seriously for your father. I ought to be with him now.

Elsie. Haven't you done enough here for the proprieties?

Edmund. I must go to your father, Elsie. Come.

Elsie. I stay here with Jack.

Edmund (_after a struggle_). Very well.

(_Exit Edmund._)

Jack (_taking cap off_). Elsie, what are you doing here?

Elsie. I came to--to see your mother.

Jack. You've told her about us?

Elsie. Yes.

Jack. It should have come from me. She'd expect that. But no matter, now

she knows. What did she say?

Elsie (_hesitating, then plunging_). It's--it's all right, Jack.

Jack. Hurrah! Then we've a clear road now. I was a bit afraid. Mother

has a will of her own, and she's not easy to please. But I might have

known she couldn't resist you. Tell me what she said when you pleaded to

her with the loveliest eyes in the world and told her you loved me.

Elsie (_awkwardly_). Well----

Jack (_interrupting enthusiastically_). Yes, I know--you needn't tell

me. I can see it all. You there, she here, and then you fell into each

other's arms, and she kissed you, and what you said to each other I'm

not to know, for it was women's talk not meant for men to hear.

Elsie. Jack, you've never been like this before.

Jack. No, I've never played a great game with a broken arm and come

through it unscathed. I've never--oh, but it's you that's done the

greatest thing for me. You've won my mother for us. That was the cloud

that used to get between.

Elsie. And made you talk of self-improvement instead of my eyes? It's

only now I learn you know my eyes are good.

Jack. I have always known the beauty of your eyes.

Elsie. You couldn't tell me about them.

Jack. Not till it was all made right with mother. I thought last night

to-day would be the saddest day I've known. I had to play for Birchester

and go away from Blackton and from you. And there was mother, but you

were brave and took that burden from me, and I'm glad, Elsie, I'm glad

of everything.

Elsie. Even of that? (_Touching his arm._)

Jack. It's brought me luck. It's brought me you, safely secure at last.

I wish I had a dozen arms to break.

Elsie (_smiling_). To get a dozen me's?

Jack. To suffer with for you.

Elsie (_quickly_). You are suffering?

Jack. This bit of pain is nothing to a bad conscience, and it's that

I had meeting you and knowing I'd not the pluck to have it out with

mother. (_With a touch of brutality._) But now I've got you for my own.

No, not a dozen of you, Elsie. One's good enough for me. (_He puts his

arm round her, kissing roughly._)

Elsie (_frightened_). Jack, you're very strong.

Jack (_squeezing masterfully_). I've only one arm, but it's strong.

Elsie. I love your strength, Jack, but you do take my breath away.

You've never kissed me like that before.

Jack (_still holding her against her will_). I've not been free before.

I've kissed you guiltily, not as a free man kisses when he can give his

whole mind to it.

Elsie. Jack, let me go.

Jack. Don't you like it? I said you'd be the first to tire of kissing.

Elsie (_free of him_). It's--it's almost terrifying, Jack.

Jack (_roughly_). Rubbish, lass, you're not made of glass. You can stand

it. I needn't kiss you like I kiss my mother.

Elsie. How do you kiss your mother?

Jack. Why, respectfully.

Elsie. You don't respect me, then?

Jack. It's not the same. I love you.

Elsie (_rather more hopefully_). And you don't love her?

Jack. It's different. Where is she now?

Elsie (_indicating_). She went in there to wash some pots.

Jack (_nodding, anxiously_). She does too much of that. The work comes

heavy at her age.

Elsie. We'll change all that.

Jack (_eagerly_). Yes. Four hands _'_ull make it easy.

Elsie. My methods will be very different.

Jack. Different? She'll not like changing her ways. Old people don't

like change.

Elsie (_callously_). No, but it's good for them.

Jack. My getting married _'_ull be change enough. We must be careful not

to upset her.

Elsie. You're very fond of your mother, Jack.

Jack. I try to do my duty.

Elsie (_gladly_). It's only duty, then?

Jack. Only! Honour thy father and thy mother that--

Elsie. Yes, but I don't want to make old bones. And that honouring

business is a bit fly-blown. We spell it humour your parents nowadays

and not too much of that. A badly brought up parent's worse than a

spoilt child.

Jack. Of course, you're joking, Elsie, and I know I'm not a judge of

taste, but I don't somehow think we ought to make fun of our parents.

Elsie. I wasn't joking, Jack. If your mother's going to stay with us,

she'll have to realize the century she's living in.

Jack (_reprovingly_). My mother's mistress of this house, Elsie.

Elsie. This house. Yes. But we're going to be happy in a cottage on the

moors by Birchester, and if people who've forgotten what it is to be

young try any interference, so much the worse for them.

Jack (_angrily_). Did you tell her that before you asked about the

marrying?

Elsie. Tell her what?

Jack. That you expected her to take a back seat and watch you

interfering with her arrangements?

Elsie. Interfering's not the word. They'll be revolutionized. Our

cottage will be run on rational and hygienic principles.

Jack. I'd rather have it comfortable.

Elsie. It will be comfortable.

Jack. With you and her squabbling all the time?

Elsie (_very discouraged, but still brave_). We shan't squabble if

she'll be sensible.

Jack. Her idea of sense mayn't be the same as yours.

Elsie. It probably won't. It's all right, Jack. I've had practice in

handling parents.

Jack. I've seen a bit of it, too. You shan't treat mother that way. If

we're to marry, Elsie--

Elsie. _If_ we're to marry!

Jack. My mother's first with me. I take my orders from her and you'll

just have to do the same.

(_Enter Mrs. Metherell. She has an apron on which she wipes her hands

and then takes it off, hanging up behind door._)

Mrs. Metherell. So you've broken your arm, I hear.

Jack (_his attitude is that of a weak-willed child. He almost cowers

before her_). Yes, mother.

Mrs. Metherell. Wasn't there work enough with a flitting without

fetching and carrying for you? Who's going to break the coals now?

Elsie. Mrs. Metherell!

Jack. It's all right, Elsie. It's just her way.

Mrs. Metherell (_turning on Elsie_). And you've been turning my house

upside down upstairs. A lot of need you have to talk, my girl. You've

been in here ten minutes with a famished man and not so much as lifted a

hand to put out his food. I told you where it was.

Elsie. I'm sorry. (_Going in terrified alacrity to cupboard, and finding

plate of cold steak pie, which she puts on table._)

Mrs. Metherell (_with rough kindness_). Sit you down, Jack. (_Lifts

teapot to table and pours._)

Elsie. Oh, that tea's been made so long.

Jack. I like it black.

Elsie. I'm sure Jack ought to have----

Mrs. Metherell. Jack _'_ull have what I provide for him, and be thankful

he's got it.

(_Elsie fusses over Jack's plate, cutting up small._)

Elsie (_to Jack_). You'll be having late dinners in a month.

(_Mrs. Metherell is returning teapot to hob._)

Jack. She'll never let us.

Mrs. Metherell (_returning_). I'll do that.

(_Elsie moves away._)

If he's to be spoon-fed, I'll feed him.

Elsie (_timidly_). I was doing it to help you, Mrs. Metherell.

Mrs. Metherell. You were doing it to show how fond you are. What's this

I hear about you, Jack?

Jack (_his mouth full_). Well, she's told you.

Mrs. Metherell. Hadn't you a tongue in your own mouth?

Jack. I'd have told you to-night.

Mrs. Metherell. Going courting behind my back.

Jack. You will have your grumble, mother.

Mrs. Metiierell. I'd do more than grumble if you hadn't gone and hurt

yourself. You might have done it on purpose just to get on the soft side

of me.

Elsie. Is this your soft side, Mrs. Metiierell?

Mrs. Metiierell. Yes. Company manners. I'm keeping what I have to say to

Jack till you've gone.

Elsie. Jack's ill. You're not to bully him.

Mrs. Metherell. Is he your son or mine? Because if he's mine I'll not

ask your leave to say what I like to him. I'm mistress here.

Else. Yes, but, Mrs. Metherell----

Mrs. Metiierell. That'll do from you. I've had enough of your back

answers. You talk too much.

(_Knock at door. Mrs. Metherell, eyeing Elsie as she goes, opens door.

Austin is outside._)

Austin. Mrs. Metherell?

Mrs. Metherell. Yes.

Elsie (_coming forward on hearing the voice_). Father! Austin. You here,

Elsie! (_Entering--to Mrs. Metherell._) Thank you.

(_Mrs. Metherell closes door grimly._)

Well, Metherell, I've come to see how you are.

Jack (_rising_). I wasn't carried off the field, but it isn't you I have

to thank for it.

Austin (_sincerely_). No. It's your own magnificent skill. I never saw

such play.

Mrs. Metiierell (_coming between them_). You'll excuse me, but I don't

allow that kind of talk in here.

Austin (_surprised_). But I was praising your son, Mrs. Metherell.

Mrs. Metherell. He's buttered up too much outside. In here he get's his

makeweight of the other thing.

Jack. There's no more praise for me in this town, mother. I'm not

popular. They've lost a lot of money on this match.

Mrs. Metherell. Was that your fault?

Jack. I played for Birchester. The bets were made on Blackton before

they knew I was transferred.

Mrs. Metherell (_indignantly_). They're blaming _you_ for that?

Austin. Fair weather sportsmen!

Jack. There's no denying I won the match for Birchester.

Mrs. Metherell (_indignantly_). Whose fault was it you played for

Birchester? Yours? No. There stands the man you have to thank for that.

Austin (_taken aback_). Really, Mrs. Metherell, I was hardly

prepared----

Mrs. Metherell (_accusingly_). You've made my Jack unpopular. That's

what you've done. (_Looking at Jack proudly, while he expresses blank

astonishment._) There never was a favourite like Jack. Not a man in the

whole of Blackton but looked up to Jack, nor a woman but envied me my

son.

Jack. But, mother, I didn't know you cared. You've always----

Mrs. Metherell. You didn't know I cared! Because I haven't gone and

shouted with the others round the field, because I haven't dinned it in

your ears and did my level best to stop them spoiling you, do you think

I took no pride in knowing you're the idol of the town? I'll show you if

I care. Out of that door, Mr. Whitworth. Out of that door, I say. You've

brought trouble on this house.

Austin. Really, this is very embarrassing.

Mrs. Metherell. I'll embarrass you. You've made my Jack unpopular. What

do you want here? Your daughter? Take her and go.

Austin. What I wanted was a little private conversation with your son,

Mrs Metherell.

Mrs. Metiierell. You've finished with my son. You're not his master now.

Austin. No. But as a friend, I hoped----

Mrs. Metherell. And you're not his friend.

Austin. I can't make things clear if you won't let me, Mrs. Metherell.

Mrs. Metherell. They're clear enough.

Austin (_desperately_). Metherell, will you do me the favour of stepping

outside with me for three minutes' business conversation?

Mrs. Metherell (_scoffing_). Business!

Elsie. You have no business now with Jack that doesn't include me. If

Jack goes, I go.

Austin. This includes you.

Mrs. Metherell. Jack doesn't go. Jack stays where he is.

Austin (_trying to be dignified_). Do you know who I am?

Mrs. Metherell. You're the man who's flitting me to Birchester. Turning

me out of my house, me that's lived in Blackton all my life, to go to

a strange town and buy in strange shops where'll they rob me, and live

beside strangers instead of here where everybody knew me for the mother

of Jack Metherell.

Elsie. But from what Jack says, Mrs. Metherell, Black-ton won't be very

pleasant for you now.

Mrs. Metherell (_hotly_). Who's made it so?

Austin. Mrs. Metherell, can't we be friends? I've always been on

friendly terms in Club affairs with Jack, until to-day.

Mrs. Metherell. A lot can happen in a day.

Austin. Yes. To-day the club has died.

Elsie. Died!

Austin. Yes. You know something of what the club has meant to me. I made

it, built it, fostered it, and now it's dead. There's been a meeting

since the match. The other directors had pence in where I had pounds.

They won't put another farthing down to save the club, and I can't. I'm

ruined. But that isn't what I'm here for now. I've lost to-day a greater

thing than money.

Elsie. Ruined! Father, what do you mean?

Mrs. Metherell. You needn't fret. Ruined is a way of talking. He'll have

a nest-egg left to pay your servants and your milliner's bills.

Austin. No. It means literally ruined. Metherell has cause to know my

case was pretty desperate.

Jack. I didn't know how bad.

Austin. Could you have acted any differently if you had?

Jack. You know I couldn't.

Austin (_sincerely_). No. You've showed up well to-day, and I've showed

badly.

Jack (_sympathetically_). You were in a hole.

Austin. A man can never tell beforehand what he'll do in a tight corner,

but he can be ashamed afterwards if he's done the wrong thing. And

I'm--I'm trying now to snatch some rags of self-respect. Won't you help

me, Mrs. Metherell?

Mrs. Metherell (_graciously_). Well, maybe a drowning man can't be

particular what straw he clutches at. What can I do?

Austin. Jack was the straw I clutched. I tempted him, and, to his honour

and my own dishonour, he withstood me. But I owe him reparation, and I

want to pay. If I can see these two young people happy, I shan't feel

utterly debased. I shall have rescued from the wreck enough to give me

back my soul.

Mrs. Metherell (_hardening again_). That's a grand high way to talk

about a bit of conscience-money.

Austin (_humbly_). Yes, call it conscience-money if you like, although

I have no money now, and money won't buy me back my peace of mind. I'm

going to do the one thing in my power to right the wrong I did to Jack

this afternoon. I'm going to put this marriage through.

Mrs. Metherell (_ironically_). Oh? What marriage may that be?

Austin. Don't you know?

Elsie. Of course she knows.

Austin. Then that's all right, and a load's gone off my mind.

Elsie. One moment, father.

Austin. Yes. What is it?

Elsie. I'm not so confident about it as I was.

Austin. As you were when? It's not an hour since you defied the world to

stand between you and Jack.

Elsie. It's not the world that stands between. It's Mrs. Metherell.

Jack. Elsie! (_Going towards her, then standing bewildered._)

Austin. Mrs. Metherell! (_Turning to her genially_). Oh, come, we

parents have to make this sacrifice to see our children happy.

Mrs. Metherell. I care as much about Jack's happiness as you.

Austin. Then we're unanimous. That's settled then.

Elsie, (_quietly_). Not quite.

Austin. Why not. (_Looking at Jack._) You told me my consent was all you

wanted.

Mrs. Metherell (_eyeing Jack_). Did you?

Jack. No. I said I'd want yours too.

Austin. Of course. Well, you've got my consent now, freely, gladly

given.

Jack. Yes, I wanted that.

Austin. Isn't that everything?

Elsie. No. I've been thinking.

Austin. I thought you knew your own mind, Elsie.

Elsie. I didn't know Mrs. Metherell. Perhaps I didn't know Jack.

Austin (_still with confidence_). There's been some lovers' tiff between

you. Come, Elsie, I divided you this afternoon. Let me unite you now.

What is the difficulty? I'm sure it's just a temporary trifle.

Elsie. Whether it's temporary depends on how long Mrs. Metherell

proposes to live.

Mrs. Metherell (_enjoying herself_). I'm hearty, thank you. Mine's a

long-lived family.

Austin (_brushing the difficulty aside_). Mrs. Metherell won't stand in

your way, Elsie.

Mrs. Metherell. Speak for yourself.

Austin. Oh, now I see. You're feeling as I did. It took me by surprise.

But I'm converted now, and you'll find you'll soon grow used to the

idea. Once you and I were young ourselves, and----

Elsie. Father, it's no use talking to Mrs. Metherell as if she was a

reasonable being. It rests with Jack to choose.

Jack. To choose?

Elsie. Yes. Me or your mother. Which is it to be?

Jack. I--I don't know. (_Glancing shiftily at Mrs. Metherell._)

Mrs. Metherell (_menacingly_). You'd better know, and sharp.

Jack. She's my mother, Elsie.

Elsie. Yes. Who comes first? Your mother or the woman you--the woman I

used to think you loved.

Jack (_hurt_). Elsie, you know I love you.

Elsie. Do I? Is it love? Love hasn't widened your horizon. Love should

break through, but you can't see beyond your mother for all your love.

Austin (_peace-making_). Elsie, you mustn't ask a man to make a choice

like that. These relationships don't clash. They sort themselves out.

Elsie. That's all you know about it. If you'd been here earlier, you'd

have seen the clash all right.

Austin. I didn't see it, but I know you're very capable of looking after

yourself.

Elsie. Oh, I can manage you. And I can manage Jack. You're men, but----

Mrs. Metherell. You can't manage me.

Elsie (_agreeing_). I've met my match.

Austin (_earnestly_). Elsie, I've set my heart on seeing you happy. My

future's black. I see no future for myself at all, but I hoped that this

one satisfaction would be granted me. You wanted Jack.

Elsie. Yes, but----

Austin. Do you still want him?

Elsie. He's got a mother.

Austin. Never mind her. Do you want him?

Elsie. Yes. By himself.

Austin. Very well. Metherell, do you want her?

Jack. My mother doesn't want me to want her.

Austin. No. But do you?

Jack. It's like this----

Elsie. It's no good, father. If wishing could kill Mrs. Metherell, she'd

be dead at my feet.

Jack. Elsie!

Mrs. Metherell. Plain speaking breaks no bones. I can give as good as I

get.

Austin. May I speak plainly, then? Frankly, don't you think your

attitude is selfish. We've all to see our children go from us, or the

world would never get on. Let me appeal to you--and I think you will

acknowledge that a man of my position is not accustomed to appeal to

a woman of--well, you'll admit the difference between us, and the fact

that I make very earnestly this petition should----

Mrs. Metherell. Yes. I'll admit the difference between us. You're

ruined. I'm not.

Austin (_taken aback_). Ruined!

Mrs. Metherell. Didn't you say so?

Austin (_bitterly_). Yes. I'm ruined.

Mrs. Metherell. You've a family. It's a good lift to a ruined man with

a family to get a daughter off his hands. That's why you've come to push

her on to us. We mayn't be swells, but we can keep her, and that's more

than you can do, so----

Austin (_to Jack_). Metherell, you don't believe that, do you?

Jack (_avoiding Mrs. Metherell's eye_). No. I think you're sorry you

forgot yourself this morning.

Austin. I've done my best to make amends.

Jack. Yes.

Austin. Is it----?

Elsie. Yes, father. It's impossible.

Jack. Elsie!

Elsie (_to Jack_). Isn't it impossible?

Jack (_after a pause while he looks from Elsie to Mrs. Metherell,

finally meeting Mrs. Metherell's eye and bending his head._) Yes.

(_Edmund knocks and enters without waiting._)

Edmund. May I come in?

Austin. You here, Edmund!

Edmund. I came back for Elsie. I've been looking for you everywhere.

Mrs. Metherell. Well, now you've found him, you'd better take him away.

I'll be charging some of you rent for the use of my room.

Edmund. But what's happened?

Elsie. Oh, you've won.

Edmund. I've won?

Elsie. Yes. The old guard. You and Mrs. Metherell.

Mrs. Metherell. Yes. You saw it wouldn't do. You're the only Whitworth

in your senses.

Edmund. Thank you, Mrs. Metherell.

Austin (_cornering Edmund, anxiously_). You know we lost the match.

Edmund. Yes. What are you going to do?

Austin. I've not had time to think about myself. This affair came first.

Edmund. Well, this is where I come in.

Austin (_with a touch of an elder brother's contempt_). What can you do?

The club's wound up.

Edmund. If I like, I can do a good deal. I'm a bachelor with a good city

practice, and no expensive hobbies, Austin.

Austin (_bitterly_). I never thought it would come to this. My young

brother.

Edmund. Not so young. Oh, if it stings a bit, perhaps it ought to. You'd

the old man's house and the lion's share of his money, and I've got

to pull you out of the hole you dug yourself. There's only one person

who'll like it less than you, and that's my energetic nephew.

Austin. Leo!

Edmund. I'll present Master Leo with his articles. The law's a splendid

cure for lungs and laziness.

Jack (_approaching Edmund_). Mr. Whitworth, there's no ill feeling, is

there?

Edmund. Not a bit.

Jack. And Mr. Austin fancies he owes me something.

Edmund. Oh?

Austin. I have that bribery business badly on my mind.

Edmund. What do you want, Metherell?

Jack. I'm a man with ambitions, sir, and I heard what you said about Mr.

Leo. Would you give me my articles?

Edmund. My friend, you're an excellent footballer, but you'd make a

shocking lawyer with that delicate conscience of yours.

Mrs. Metherell. You'll go on living honestly, Jack.

Jack (_submissively_). Yes, mother.

Mrs. Metherell. And when you marry I'll choose you a decent hard-working

girl who'll look after you properly, and not a butter-fingered lass

who'll break your crockery and want waiting on hand and foot and----

Edmund. Mrs. Metherell!

Mrs. Metherell. Oh, I forgot you were there. I was just talking

privately to my son, same as you've been doing amongst yourselves.

Edmund. We've earned that. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Metherell.

Elsie. Good-bye, Jack.

Jack (_taking her hand_). Good-bye, Miss Whitworth.

(_Elsie turns her face away. Edmund opens door._)

Austin (_shaking his hand_). Metherell, I'm sorry.

Jack. You did your best to make it right.

(_Exit Austin._)

Edmund (_at door_). Elsie.

Elsie (_going to him_). Yes, uncle?

Edmund (_going out with his arm round her_). London! (_Elsie smiles

gladly at him as they go out. Mrs. Metherell places teapot on table.

Jack sits and resumes his tea._)

CURTAIN.

Note.--_The "transfer" of a football player from one team to another

cannot now be made with the rapidity shown in this play. At the time

when "The Game" was written, such a transfer was possible. A year or

two earlier, indeed transfers were made at least as quickly as in the

play--and one is allowed a certain licence of compression in a play. The

instance in point is recorded in the "World's Work" for September, 1912,

In an article entitled, "Is Football a Business?"_

_Mr. J. J. Bentley, ex-president and life member of the Football League,

tells how he effected the transfer of a player named Charles Roberts

from Grimsby to Manchester United on a Friday night, the player being at

Grimsby, and Mr. Bentley in London. The matter was settled by telephone

at midnight, and in sixteen hours after signing Roberts appeared in the

Manchester United Colours._

*****

THE NORTHERNERS

A DRAMA OF THE EIGHTEEN-TWENTIES

CHARACTERS.

_Factory Owners_. Ephraim Barlow; John Heppenstall

Guy Barlow, _Ephraim's son_.

Captain Las celles.

Matthew Butterworth

_Weavers_. Martin Kelsall; Joseph Healey; Henri Callard

Mary Butterworth, _Matthew's wife._

Ruth Butterworth, _his daughter._

_The Scene is laid in Lancashire in 1820_.

Act I. _Evening in Matt Butterworth's Cottage_.

Act II.--_An evening six months later in Ephraim Barlow's house._

Act III.--_The next night. A quarry on the moors_.

Act IV.--_Later the same night in Ephraim Barlow's house._

ACT I.

_Interior of Matthew Butterworth's cottage. The room has three doors,

one leading directly outside, one to the lean-to shed which holds the

hand-loom, the third to the stairs. The cottage is that of a prosperous

artisan of 1820, and the general standard of comfort little higher than

that of a modern slum. The room is in darkness and through the door is

heard the monotonous clickety-clackety of a handloom. A brisk knock

is heard at the front door, and as Mary Butterworth opens the door l.,

carrying a dip candle in an iron candlestick, the sound of the loom

increases. She crosses, leaving candle on table and opens the front

door. Outside are Joseph Healey, Martin Kelsall and Henri Callard._

_Mary is fifty, dressed in a dark dress of linsey woolsey, with

neckerchief of indigo blue printed cotton over her shoulders and a full

apron of blue-and-white check round her waist. The men who enter are all

obviously poorer. Joe Healey, the oldest of them, for instance, hopes in

vain by buttoning high his waistcoat to hide the absence of a shirt. All

wear clogs, breeches and coats more or less ragged and patched. Martin

is twenty-four, thin to emaciation, but handsome and fervent. Henri

carries himself well, wears his rags gallantly and his clothes are

lighter coloured._

*****

Joe (_as Mary opens door_). Is Matthew in, Mrs. Butterworth?

Mary (_without standing from door_). Yes. You'll hear his loom if you

hearken.

Joe. It's a sound that isn't often heard outside the factory nowadays.

Mary. It's one that isn't often hushed in here. Matthew's busy.

Henri (_half entering. Mary gives back_). Too busy to see us, Madame

Butterworth?

Joe (_entering and speaking importantly_). Tell him the 'Friends of the

People are here to see him on the people's business.

(_Henri and Martin enter, Martin closing the door._)

Mary (_raising the candle to their faces_). I know you. I know you all.

You, Joe Healey and young Martin Kendall, and you--you're the Frenchman.

Henri (_bowing_). I am the Frenchman, madame.

Mary (_replacing the candle, disgustedly_). Radicals, the three of you.

Joe (_reprovingly_). We are Friends of the People.

Mary. Yes. Friends of yourselves.

Joe. Yes, of ourselves and of you and of Matthew there. We are the

people.

Mary (_militantly_). You're Radicals. And my Matthew's not a redcap like

that Frenchie there that's fled his country to come disturbing quiet

English folk with his nonsense.

Henri. I left my country when the Bourbons entered it again.

(_Rhetorically._) The blood I'd shed for freedom----

Joe (_interrupting_). We'll talk to Matthew about all that.

Mary (_standing, barring the door_). You will not talk to Matthew. I'll

not have my man made a Radical, and run his head into a noose for the

sake of----

Martin (_quietly_). For the sake of freedom.

Mary. We're free enough.

Henri. You are free to starve. To be slaves of the cotton masters, who

treat you worse than any grand seigneur would have treated his peasants

under the Bourbons.

Mary (_dryly_). Well, Matthew's busy.

Joe. He's not too busy to attend to us. We want him out.

Mary. And you'll not get him.

Joe. I think we shall. (_Calling._) Matthew! Matthew Butterworth!

Mary. Yes, you may call. You'll burst your lungs before he'll hear in

there. He's working. You're idling. Don't try to interrupt a better man.

(_Henri makes as if to force her from door, Joe checks him._)

Joe. That's why we want him with us. Because we know him for the best

weaver in these parts. Because he's treated by the master different from

us and works at home instead of being driven into the factory. We want

the best man on the people's side and none of us but gives old Matthew

best. That's what we think of your husband, Mrs. Butterworth.

Mary. And it's what I think, so you needn't fancy that it's news to me.

He's better sense than to go wasting time on a pack of crazy Radicals.

(_The loom stops, the door is thrown open and Matthew speaks off_)

Matthew. Mary, fetch that candle back. I cannot see to weave properly

with only one.

Joe. Let your loom be, Matthew, and come here. We've need of you.

(_Matthew enters in his shirt sleeves, stout waistcoat and breeches. He

is a man of sixty, solidly built with square face and grey hair, bowed

with bending to his loom._) Matthew. What's the to-do about?

Mary (_holding his arm_). They've come to trap you, Matthew.

Matthew. Trap me? They'll be wide awake.

Mary. Don't listen to them, Matt. They're Radicals.

Joe We're Reformers. You know us, Matthew.

Matthew. Aye, I know you. You, Martin! You become

a Radical?

Martin. Empty bellies make Radicals, Mr. Butterworth. Empty bellies and

the Corn Tax and bread at thirteenpence the quartern loaf.

Matthew. Empty bellies make fools then. I can hear you've picked up the

Radical cant. What do you want with me?

Joe. We've come to reason with you, Matthew.

Mary. Oh, if you're going to listen to them, I'll sit in yonder.

Matthew (_sharply_). Don't touch the loom, now.

(_Exit Mary._)

Well, what is it? I haven't time to spend on argument.

Henri. Then give us your advice, Mr. Butterworth, your help.

Matthew. I'm not a politician.

(_Martin sits wearily on settle._)

Joe. Maybe you're not. But you're a man. And you know how things are

with us. They're different with you.

Matthew. And why?

Henri. Because you're the favourite of Mr. Barlow.

Matthew. If you weren't an ignorant Frenchman you'd suffer for those

words. I'm not a favourite. It isn't me. It's my work. There's never

been a yard of faulty cloth made on my loom. It's good. It's the honest

work of a man that takes a pride in making it good, not like your rotten

machine-made muck that's turned out at the factory. That's why Mr.

Barlow sends me yarn to weave. He gets his special price for the cloth

I weave and he knows it pays to let me weave it. That's not making a

favourite of me. It's business.

Joe (_quietly_). It's making an exception of you, Matthew. You're

working all the hours God sends, but you're drawing good money every

week and you're living in comfort with your missus and your daughter

both at home. My girls are in the factory and the wages of the lot of us

don't keep the cold and hunger from our door.

Matthew. What else do you expect but distress when you've let them get

machines to do the work of men? It's Arkwright's spinning frames and

Watt's steam engines that take the bread from your mouths. It isn't

Barlow's, nor Heppenstall's, nor Whitworth's over the hill, nor

Mottershead's, nor any of the manufacturers. It's steel and iron that

have got you down, and more fools you for letting them.

Henri. You talk like one of us already.

Matthew. Aye? Only I'm not one of you.

Joe. Is it our fault? We can't all weave like you. We're not all master

craftsmen with looms of our own and no debts hanging round our necks.

The machines are there. We can't get beyond it.

Henri. We can break the machines.

Matthew (_sharply_). No violence. Violence never did anybody good.

Henri. We did no good in France until we took the Bastille.

Matthew. And did that do any good? You're here, in exile, because your

countrymen forgot the Bastille and welcomed Louis Bourbon back.

Joe (_soberly_). I'm against violence myself till all else fails. That

what we want of you, Matt. Help us to escape violence.

Matt. What help?

Joe. Will you go to London?

Matt. London?

Joe. Yes. (_Very earnestly._) They don't know there. They cannot know or

else they wouldn't let things go on and let poor weavers starve. Eight

shillings have I taken from the factory this week. Eight shillings and

the loaf at thirteenpence! We want to tell the Government we're starving

while the masters stink of brass. Wages must go higher or taxes lower.

They must do something.

Matthew. Why should I go? I'm not a factory hand.

Henri. That's why they'll listen to a word from you. We'll go too,

some of us, but there's little use in that because we're known to be

reformers. There are Government spies in every Democratic Club. You can

hardly trust your nearest friend. The spies are everywhere.

Matthew. How do you make out they don't know about us, then?

Joe. They can't. Even Parliament men aren't fiends from Hell.

Matthew. It's no good going to London. Think of the March of the

Blanketeers.

Joe. Think of it! Wasn't I one of them? One of the thousands who met on

Ardwick Green, and the hundreds that met the Yeomanry at Stockport, and

the tens that struggled through to Macclesfield?

Matthew (_scornfully_). Yes. You got as far as Macclesfield. Do you

think they'll let you get to London to tell them? Do you think

they _want_ to know? And if they do get there, and tell them, the

manufacturers will be there first telling them another tale, and whose

tale do you think they'll believe? Yours or theirs? Going to London's a

fool's errand. They _do_ know and they don't care. They're South, we're

North, and what the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve at. You

made your beds, when you let Arkwright set up his machinery, and you've

to lie on them.

Martin (_rising dejectedly_). God help the poor!

Henri (_turning fiercely on him_). God helps those that help themselves.

I'll hear you weavers sing the Marseillaise before I die.

Joe (_to Matthew_). You're against violence and you're against politics.

What _do_ you favour?

Matthew (_grimly_). I favour work and I favour my loom, and if you've

said your say I'll be getting back to it.

Joe. Aye, that's the old story. Work, and every man for himself and his

hand against his neighbour, while the masters join to keep us down.

Matthew. I've something else to do than falling out with my bread and

cheese. I'm not a politician, I'm a weaver, and I've not got time for

two jobs. I'm not a Republican neither. I throw the shuttle and I don't

throw stones.

Henri. Coward. It is because you do not dare.

Matthew (_contemptuously_). It's well for you you're French and it's

known you'd break if an Englishman touched you with his hand.

Joe. It's well for you you're prosperous with your loom at home and your

women at home and your daughter dressed like----

(_Enter Ruth Butterworth by the front door. She is twenty-one, dark,

passionate, tall, in a plain, narrow-skirted, short-sleeved gown of

woolsey, with a bright-coloured cotton handkerchief crossed over the

bust and tied at the back of the short waist, dress low at the neck,

straw bonnet and boots._)--like she is. (_Preparing to go._) I'm grieved

we've failed to move you, but you're better off than us, and it's the

skill of your hands you have to thank for it. Machinery has played the

very hangment with the rest of us. Good-night, Matt.

Matthew. Good-night, Joe Healey. (_They shake. Matthew looks

contemptuously at Henri._) Take your Republican with you. I've a word in

season to say to young Martin Kelsall.

(_Exeunt Joe and Henri. Ruth stands by settle._)

Now, my lad, you came here to see me a week ago.

Martin (_looking guiltily at Ruth, who shows surprise_). Yes, Mr.

Butterworth.

Matthew. You said nowt about being a Radical then. Martin. I came on

other business.

Matthew. And you said nowt about starving bellies. If you can't make

brass enough to fill one belly, you'll be hard put to it to fill two.

Ruth. That's all over, father.

Matthew. Is it? Did he speak to you?

Ruth. Yes. I told him "no."

Martin (_to Ruth_). Have I no chance?

Matthew. A chance of what? Of taking Ruth from here, where she's all a

woman wants, and making her starve alongside of you and expecting her to

go into the factory to help you to make a livelihood. My daughter's not

for your sort, my lad.

Ruth. I told him that.

Martin. Yes, you told me, but I haven't finished hoping yet.

Matthew. If you're hoping for a wife to work for you, you've come to the

wrong shop this time.

Martin. You're a proud man, Mr. Butterworth, and, Ruth, you're proud and

all. I'm just a weaver lad that loves you and _'_ud work till I drop for

you. And maybe you'll find out your mistake some day. Proud you may be

and proud you are, but if you're not above taking a warning from me,

you'll be careful where you walk o' nights. There's company that's

dangerous for you.

Matthew (_suspiciously_). What's that?

Ruth (_quickly_). Who cares what a man says when he's sent about his

business?

Matthew. You're right there, lass. It's not for me to take notice of his

words.

Martin. Then take notice of this, Ruth. I love you. I always shall. No

matter what happens, I always shall. And I'm a patient man. I'm used to

waiting.

Ruth. You'll be more used to it if you're going to wait for me.

Martin (_doggedly_). I'm going to wait.

Matthew (_opening the door, grimly_). Good-night to you. (_Slight pause,

then Martin moves to door._)

Martin (_going_). Good-night.

(_Exit Martin._)

Matthew. I'll be getting back to my loom. I've wasted too much time

to-night.

(_Exit Matthew. The sound of the loom is heard, and, immediately she

hears it, Ruth opens the front door and calls._)

Ruth. Martin! Martin, come back a minute.

(_After a moment Martin reciters._)

Martin. You want me?

Ruth. I want to speak to you before you go.

Martin (_advancing_). Ruth!

Ruth. No. Don't mistake me. I haven't changed my mind, but I want you to

understand. Just now, you tried to warn me.

Martin. Yes? I warn you again. It isn't safe.

Ruth. You mean Guy Barlow?

Martin. Yes, you know I mean Guy Barlow.

Ruth. That's what I wanted to be certain of. I wanted you to know that

what I do is done with open eyes.

Martin. You're playing with fire.

Ruth. It won't be me that's burnt. I've got my purpose clear and strong

before me, Martin. It's you put this thing in my mind and I'm going

through with it for your sake.

Martin. For my sake! A lot you care for me.

Ruth. That's neither here nor there.

Martin. No more than a month ago I'd have broken the jaw of any man that

said you weren't my wench. We hadn't spoke it out to each other, but

I thought it was that sure it didn't need the speaking. And then you

changed and I found out what changed you. So I thought I'd save you if I

could. I asked you, and you said "No." I asked your father and I got

my answer to-night. And now, you'll go your way, the woman I love. God

knows what's changed you, but----

Ruth. Nothing has changed me, Martin.

Martin. Then marry me.

Ruth. No.

Martin. You don't love me.

Ruth. I haven't said I did.

Martin. Yes, you have. Not in words, I grant you, but if looks mean

anything you've told it me a hundred times. Do you think he'll marry

you? He won't. Marriage is not what Guy Barlow wants. I could tell you

tales----

Ruth. You needn't. I'll make him marry me.

Martin. He didn't marry the others.

Ruth. Had they my beauty?

Martin. Beauty! Yes, you're beautiful. By God, you are.

Ruth. I've the gift of beauty, Martin, and I'm going to use it.

Martin. Because he's rich, and I'm poor.

Ruth. No, because he's powerful over others and I want power over him.

When you and I have gone our walks and been together on the moors, did

we talk of nothing but the stars? You told me dreams, dreams of all the

things you'd do if some great god gave you the power. It's I shall have

that power, Martin, and use it in the way you taught me. Your thoughts,

your dreams--and my pretty face gives me the chance to take your dreams

and make them live. That's what I'm going to do.

Martin. It's nothing but another dream.

Ruth. It's real this time, Martin.

Martin. But we did talk of the stars sometimes, and of ourselves and----

Ruth. That was the dream. That was happiness.

Martin. Why shouldn't we be happy? It's a crime to throw yourself away

on him for the sake of us.

Ruth. No, it's a crusade. I hope We shall be happy, but not together,

Martin. I shan't do it all in a day, even after he has married me, but

I shall manage him in time, and all this misery shall cease. You do

believe I shall, don't you, Martin? You do approve?

Martin (_after a pause_). God give you strength.

Ruth. I think He will. You understand now, Martin?

Martin. I understand. (_Slight pause._) Ruth, are you sure?

Ruth (_calmly_). I'm going through with it. Good-night, Martin.

Martin (_approaching her, then backing as she gives no encouragement_).

Good-night, Ruth.

(_Exit Martin. Ruth closes the door, then takes off her hat as Mary

enters._)

Mary (_sourly_). So you've come in. And where have you been?

Ruth. Out.

Mary. You've a fancy for going out o' nights.

Ruth. I suppose I'm old enough to please myself when I go out.

Mary. I suppose you think you are. Times are changed since I was young.

I'd have got the rolling-pin at my head if I'd answered your grandmother

back the way you answer me. I'd never any time for going out at nights.

Too busy spinning. (_She busies herself getting out crockery, etc.,

putting it on table without cloth._)

Ruth. Machines spin now.

Mary. And women and children watch the machines. But of course I mustn't

say owt of that. Send you to the factory and I'd know where to put my

hand on you. But no. What's good enough for others isn't good enough for

you.

Ruth. They're fitted for the factory.

Mary. And what are you fitted for? Nowt, but to fancy yourself a fine

lady. I know if I was your father, I'd have you working for the bread

you eat and the clothes you wear, like every other girl about. But he's

got his way and made an idler of you.

Ruth. Perhaps he's right.

Mary. It's not my way of bringing up a girl.

Ruth. Never mind, mother. I'll be surprising you one of these days.

Mary. Yes. You're always in the right. You're like your father. Got

stiff neck with pride.

Ruth. Maybe, I've cause for pride.

Mary. And maybe you haven't, and all, and if you have I've never seen

cause for it.

Ruth. You shall do very soon.

Mary. You're hiding something.

Ruth. It won't be hidden long.

Mary. What is it now? Out with it, lass.

Ruth. Not yet, mother. I'll tell you when there's anything to tell.

(_A knock is heard. Mary opens door after momentary surprise. Outside

are Ephraim and Guy Barlow. Ephraim is a man of about sixty, well

covered with flesh, clean-shaven, grey, square in the face, but not too

strong of feature, wearing a short-bodied, long-tailed bottle-green

coat, breeches to match, waistcoat, ruffled shirt frill, low-crowned

black beaver hat with narrow curly rim, and thick draft top-coat, long

in the skirt and with a huge collar Guy is twenty-eight, with fair hair

and a stronger face than his father. He is clean-shaven and his clothes

more fashionable and of finer material than the stout durable cloth

Ephraim prefers. He has trousers instead of knee breeches._)

Ephraim. Is this Matt Butterworth's?

Mary. Surely, Mr. Barlow. Will you step inside? (_Holding door open._)

Ephraim (_entering_). It's what I came to do.

(_Guy follows. Mary closes door._)

That'll be Matt at his loom?

Mary. Yes. I'll bring him to you. (_Crosses, opens door._) Matt, here's

the master.

Matthew (_entering, putting on his coat_). The master! Ephraim. Good

evening, Matt.

Matthew. You'll sit down, won't you?

Ephraim. Thanks.

Matthew. And you too, Mr. Guy.

Guy. Thank you.

Matt. Well, I'm glad to see you here, and if so be as bread and cheese

and ale are not beneath you, there's enough for all.

Ephraim (_half heartedly_). Well, thankee, Matt Butterworth----

Guy (_interrupting_). No. It's business brings us here, not eating. (_To

Matthew._) My father has something to say to you.

(_At a glance from Matthew, Mary and Ruth go out._)

Ephraim. Yes, I thought I'd come and tell you here instead of sending

for you up to factory.

Matthew (_grimly_). It's as well you did come. You'd not have got me

there by sending. I've never entered factory gate and never will.

Ephraim (_good-naturedly_). You're a pig-headed old stick in-the-mud,

Matt. You won't move with the times.

Matthew. Not when the times move to factories.

Ephraim. Well, well, you're an obstinate fellow. What's wrong with

factories?

Matthew. What isn't wrong? They're bits of hell spewed up on earth.

Guy. You'd better keep a civil tongue in your head.

Matthew. I'm talking to your father, Mr. Guy, and we've known each other

long enough to speak what's in our minds. You're a young man and the

young get used to changes quickly. You find machines a natural state

of things. I'll tell you how things were before the factories came and

progress got a hold over everything. I'd open yon door in a morning

and I'd see children playing in the fields. Where are the children now?

Driven into your factory at five in the morning pretty nigh as soon as

they can walk and thrashed with a cane to keep the poor little devils

awake when all the nature in them's crying out for sleep. I'd go into

a neighbour's cottage and I'd see a loom with a warp on it and a weaver

taking pride in his work. You've taken the work away from men and given

it to machines. And the worst is the machines don't care. You send out

miles of cloth for every inch we used to weave, and every yard you send

as full of faults as an egg of meat. It's that you've done with your

factories, young sir. You've broken the weaver's spirit and you've

killed the joy he used to take in honest craftsmanship. It's quality

that used to count and a man _'_ud think shame to himself to produce a

cloth that's full of weaving faults. There are no weavers now. They're

servants of a steam engine.

Guy. I'm sorry it upsets you, Mr. Butterworth, but facts are too much

for you. Hand looms are played out.

Matthew (_intensely convinced_). Never, while good workmanship endures.

If they want the best, they'll come to the handloom weaver for it.

Guy. Yes, but you see they don't want the best.

Matthew. They want designs that a man conceives in joy and executes with

pride. They want a cloth that shows he's taken pride in making it, and

knows it's his design and not a copy of another's.

Guy. We can sell a hundred pieces of the same design with as little

trouble as your one.

Matthew. And which _'_ull wear longest?

Guy. We don't want cloth to wear, we want it to sell.

Matthew (_dismissing him, sadly_). Mr. Guy, it's a hard thing to say

of your father's son, but I've a fear you're a godless youth. (_To

Ephraim._) What was it you wanted of me, Mr. Barlow?

Ephraim (_awkwardly_). You've made it rather hard to tell you that. I

didn't know you thought so badly of the factories. (_Turning._) Guy, I

think, perhaps----

Guy (_curtly_). No. If you won't speak out, I will.

(_Slight pause. Then Ephraim gives Guy leave by a glance._) We want you

to come into the factory, Butterworth.

Matthew (_startled_). I? In factory?

Guy. Yes.

Matthew. But----

Guy. You're the last man on our pay-sheets working out. We must have

uniformity. We want you in.

Matthew. You want me, Mr. Guy. I can see who _'_tis I have to thank for

this. It's you that have brought the old master here to stand by while

you say these things to me.

Guy. Well, as it happened, you're so far wrong that I'd no intention of

coming in at all, only I was going home from a walk (_glancing away, as

if after Ruth_), and met him on his way here.

Matthew (_to Ephraim_). Mr. Barlow, it isn't _your_ wish that I----

Ephraim. Well, Matt, we've had complaints. (_Querulously._) Weavers

nowadays are a grumbling, discontented lot, and----

Matthew. Aye. Power-loom weavers are, and have cause to be. Before you

started factories folk could save. It was a saying here that every man

in the valley owned his own house and the one next door to it.

Epiiraim. They complain I make a favourite of you, and, as Guy says, we

must have uniformity. It's just a point of discipline.

Matthew. Yes, I know what discipline means. Discipline means ringing

them into your factory at five in the morning and out at seven in the

evening, and uniformity means fifty looms in rows all tied to a steam

engine and every loom weaving the same pattern.

Guy. Look here, Butterworth, you were working when we came in. Working

at nine o'clock at night.

Matthew. Do I complain of that? Not me. I can please myself what hours

I work. It's nowt to me what time the engine stops. My engine's here.

(_Indicating his arms._)

Guy. Yes, and because it is, you never let it rest. Come into the

factory and you've finished at seven.

Matthew. I'm _sent_ away at seven. I'm under orders. I'm my own master

here, Mr. Guy, and have been all my life. If I want to work, I work, and

if I want to play, I play, and there's nobody to stop me, whether it's

tramping over the moors getting my mind choke full of the new designs

that come to me when I'm walking through the green, resting my eyes, or

whether it's a cock-fight and a bellyful of ale--and you've no need

to look shocked neither, Mr. Barlow, for I've seen time afore you got

meddling with machines when you went cock-fighting yourself, and you

weren't too big in those days to drink with me, too. And now you're

telling me to come and weave in factory.

Ephraim. Oh, nay, Matt, I'm not.

Matthew. Well, I don't know. You've stood there and heard him tell me

I'm to come in.

Ephraim. But not as weaver, Matt.

Matthew. What then?

Ephraim. As overlooker, and not a man in Lancashire that's better fitted

for it.

Matthew (_soberly weighing it_). Aye. That's no more than truth.

Ephraim. I'm not flattering. I'm a business man, and I'm choosing the

best man for the job.

Matthew. And I'm refusing it, for I'm a business man and I've got a

better job. I've an old loom in yonder and as long as she hangs together

I'll go on weaving cloth as cloth should be woven, by the skilful hand

of a man to designs of his own contriving. To hell with uniformity.

There's beauty in a loom and nowt but beastly ugliness in a row of

looms.

Guy (_coldly_). Where do you get your yarn from, Butter-worth?

Matthew. Why, from you.

Guy. And you've been selling your cloth to us?

Matthew. Yes.

Guy. We can take no more.

Matthew (_staggered_). You can't take my cloth, my beautiful cloth?

Ephraim (_with sympathy_). It's true, Matt. Good cloth means a good

price and people won't pay it.

Matthew. It's your fault, then. That's what you've brought them to.

You've spoilt them with your factory rubbish.

Guy. They want cheap cloth. We provide it. Yours is dear. We can't sell

it.

Matthew. Then I'll sell my own. I'll find buyers.

Ephraim. It's no use, Matt. Take my word for it, there are no customers

to-day for cloth like yours. What between paying the country's bill for

licking Bonaparte and power looms for silk and linen there's no demand

for cotton cloth of your quality.

Guy. And you'll get no more yarn from us.

Matthew. You're not the only ones.

Guy. Nor from others. We're going to make an end of the whole breed of

hand-loom weavers.

Matthew. We'll not be ended easy.

Guy. We want you in the factories. The factories are hungering for the

right men.

Matthew. And men are hungry because of the factories. Don't tell me my

cloth won't sell. It's cloth that sells itself.

Ephraim. Don't you believe me, Matt?

Matthew. I don't believe you know what my cloth's like. Do you see it

yourself up yonder?

Ephraim. Well--no.

Matthew (_going to door_). Then come in here and I'll show you. You'll

not be telling me then there are no decent housewives left to buy a

cloth like mine. (_Exit._)

Guy (_to Ephraim, who is following_). Oh, what's the good of wasting

time on him?

Ephraim. Best humour him, Guy. Don't come. I'll get him round.

Guy. Psh! You're too soft with the old fool.

Ephraim. And you're too hard. Matt and I were friends before you were

born.

(_Exit Ephraim. Guy moves impatiently, then sits on table. Enter Ruth._)

Ruth (_surprised and not cordial_). I thought you'd gone. I heard no

voices.

Guy. I schemed to get them into there. Do you think I'd go without a

word with you? (_Approaching her._)

Ruth (_coldly, holding him at arm's length_). We've parted once

to-night. What do you want with me?

Guy. I want everything except to part again. You witch, what have you

done to me? I haven't a nerve but tingles for the touch of you. I'm all

burnt up. The night's a tossing fever, and the day's a cruel nightmare

till evening comes and brings me sight of you.

Ruth (_backing_). Don't touch me, please.

Guy. How long am I to hold myself in leash? It's more than flesh and

blood can stand. My God, I wonder if you know how beautiful you are.

Ruth. I have a mirror in my room.

Guy. I'm jealous of that mirror, Ruth. Jealous of a piece of glass

because it sees you every day.

Ruth. You've seen me every evening for a month.

Guy. And I'm no farther than when we began. You're hot and cold by turn.

You lead me on and thrust me off. You play with me. To-night you said

you wouldn't walk with me to-morrow.

Ruth. And time I did. I've walked with you too much. A change of company

is good.

Guy (_startled_). Company? What company?

Ruth (_dryly_). My mother's. You say you're where you were when we

begun. Perhaps you are. But I am not. It's no new thing for you to go

your walks with a weaver's lass. But it's new for me to be the lass. Do

you think there are no wagging tongues about?

Guy. It's news to me that you give heed to gossip. You're not going to

talk about your reputation, are you?

Ruth. No. I shan't _talk_ about it, Guy.

Guy (_scornfully_). I thought you made of finer stuff.

Ruth. Than those others you have walked with?

Guy (_sharply_). What's that to do with you?

Ruth. Nothing, but that I find it good to know about them.

Guy. This is strange talk for a woman.

Ruth (_dryly_). Folk always say I should have been a man.

Guy (_ardently_). Thank God, you're not. It's better to rule a man than

be one, Ruth.

Ruth. Do I rule you?

Guy. You've made a slave of me. I'm at your feet.

Ruth. You told the others that.

Guy. Had they your beauty?

Ruth. Then I've the greater cause to guard it.

Guy. You haven't talked like this outside.

Ruth. I'm inside now. This is my father's cottage.

Guy. You've been like this to-night. Perverse. As if you didn't know

what passion meant. As if you laughed at me for being on fire for you.

You've come half-way to meet me till to-night. You've answered love with

love. You've been a fine free glory of a woman that it was heaven to

be near and hell to be away from, that knew to be in love was to be

upraised above the talk of fools and what a pair of lovers do is right

because they do it for their love.

Ruth (_absently_). Yes. What lovers do is right even if it's to

renounce.

Guy. Renounce? What are you talking about?

Ruth. I was thinking of a pair of lovers that I know.

Guy (_roughly_). Then stop thinking of them. Think of us.

Ruth. I'm thinking of myself.

Guy. You're in a curious mood to-night.

Ruth. To-night I'm being prudent.

Guy (_scornfully_). Prudent! Love isn't prudent. Prudence was made for

cowards, not for lovers. Ruth, you're not a coward.

Ruth (_absently_). I think that what I'm doing now is the bravest thing

I ever did. (_At him._) What do you make of it all?

Guy (_trying to be light_). I think you're a mischievous tease, and----

Ruth. I'm quite in earnest. I was in earnest when I let you talk to me

of love and still in earnest when I told you I could walk with you no

more.

Guy. Ruth! You didn't mean it?

Ruth. I meant it all. Did you?

Guy (_surprised_). Did I?

Ruth. About your love.

Guy. Why should you doubt me, Ruth?

Ruth. I'll tell you. Because in all your talk of love, you have used

a lot of words, but there is one word that you haven't spoken yet, and

that I'd like to hear before I go my walks with you again.

Guy. What word?

Ruth. Marriage.

Guy (_staggered, then recovering_). Marriage! Well, isn't it early days

for that?

Ruth. With some men and some women it would be over early. When you're

the man and I the woman, it isn't early.

Guy. Marriage! There's a directness about you.

Ruth (_simply_). Yes, there is.

Guy. I'm taken by surprise, but----

Ruth (_quietly_). Are you?

Guy. I've been too busy simply loving you to think of marriage.

(_Quickly._) Yes, Ruth, of course we're going to be married. It would be

monstrous in me ever to have intended anything else. But--er--you know,

there's my father. We shall have to keep the marriage secret. Just the

clergyman and no witnesses to make quite sure of secrecy.

Ruth (_moving to door as if leaving him and opening it_). Good-bye, Mr.

Barlow.

Guy (_staring at her_). Ruth!

Ruth. Good-bye. Yes. Look at me well. It's your last look at close

quarters.

Guy (_by her_). No, by Heaven, it's not.

Ruth (_still holding the door open_). You've told me much about my

beauty. You hold my beauty cheap.

Guy. Your beauty is the richest, finest thing in all the world.

Ruth. A secret marriage!

Guy. What's changed you, Ruth? You've shown yourself to me a soft and

yielding woman. To-night, you're hard, suspicious.

Ruth (_closing door_). To-night, I mean to strike a bargain with you.

Guy. Lovers don't talk of bargains.

Ruth. There's always time to talk of love. To-night, we'll talk of

marriage, if you please.

Guy. You mean to be wilful.

Ruth. I mean that if you want me there's a price to pay, and a secret

marriage by a puppet priest with no witnesses is too low a price for me.

Guy (_blustering_). You thought that!

Ruth (_calmly_). Wasn't I right? How badly do you want me, Mr. Guy

Barlow? You see me, and you know the price.

Guy (_quite shocked_). You didn't talk this way outside. You've made it

all so ugly. You've taken all romance away.

Ruth. Romance is safe for men. It's dangerous for women. You tell me I

was soft and yielding. What if I'd been too soft, and yielded further

than I should? You'd still have life, and life would still be beautiful

for you and you'd be looking for another woman with a pretty face to

make love beautifully with you. But I'd be dead. I should have killed

myself and you'd forget me in a little while.

Guy (_genuinely moved_). Ruth, stop! I'm not a black-guard.

Ruth. I'm hoping not, if I'm to be your wife.

Guy. I never meant you harm. I simply didn't think.

Ruth. You thought fast enough of a secret marriage. You remembered to be

prudent, and prudence, as I think you said, is made for cowards, not for

lovers. Are you a coward, Mr. Guy?

Guy. I'm a lover, Ruth. Will you be my wife?

Ruth (_with slight shudder_). Yes.

Guy (_holding her_). I've got you now.

Ruth. Yes. For better or for worse, you've got me now.

Guy. For better than the best. I never knew till I met you what love

could do to a man. Ruth, you won't remember what you fancied that I

thought to-night? You won't have that against me? It really wasn't so.

Ruth. I have only room for one thought now. I remember that you're going

to marry me.

Guy (_lightly_). In a precious few days, you'll remember that I have

married you. I'm not cut out for waiting.

Ruth. I shall not keep you waiting.

(_Enter Ephraim and Matthew._)

Ephraim. Well, that's settled now, Matt.

Matthew (_like a beaten man_). Yes, it's settled. I'll be at factory

come five to-morrow morning.

Guy. That's good.

Matthew. Is it? I'll tell you this much, Mr. Barlow, it's a bad night's

work you've done.

Guy. If you're talking to me, it's the best night's work I've ever done.

Matthew (_morosely_). I was talking to your father.

Ephraim. Well, well, we must agree to differ.

Matthew. And it won't be the last of our differences, neither. It's my

punishment, this is. I've been a proud man and I'm humbled. Some weaver

lads come here this very night asking me to join in with them.

Ephraim. Join? In what?

Matthew. Ah, well, I'll leave you to guess in what. I sent them off with

a good big flea in their ear: told them a hand-loom weaver had nowt to

do with their sort. I've everything to do with their sort now. I'm one

of them, and if they have owt to say, or do against you and your ways,

I'll say and do it with them. You've made a Radical to-night.

Ephraim. Now, Matt, don't try to threaten me. We've met as friends too

often in the days gone by for that.

Matthew. Yes, before you started getting up in the world by climbing on

other men's shoulders.

Ephraim. And if you'll let me, we'll go on being friends.

Ruth. Of course you will. Now more than ever.

Matthew (_roughly_). You don't know what you're talking about, lass.

Ruth. Tell them, Guy.

Ephraim. Guy?

Guy. Mr. Butterworth, you and my father must be friends, because I'm

going to marry Ruth.

Matthew. What's that?

Ruth. Yes, father, it's true.

Matthew (_excitedly calling and opening door_). Here, Mary! Mary, where

are you?

(_Enter Mary._)

Here's our Ruth going to wed the young master. What do you say to that?

Mary (_judicially_). I say the young master's doing well for himself.

Ephraim (_sourly_). Nobody asks what I think.

Guy. That'll be all right, father.

Ephraim. Will it?

Guy. Oh, I'll tell you about it walking home. You've Mr. Butterworth's

hand to shake.

Ephraim (_dryly_). It just depends if he's still a Radical.

Matthew. Me? I'm a maze. I don't know what I am.

Ephraim (_genially smiling_). I'll chance it then. (_They shake._) Good

night, Matt. (_Genially._) Good night.

Guy. To-morrow, Ruth.

Ruth. Yes, Guy, to-morrow.

(_Exeunt Ephraim and Guy._)

Mary (_going to Ruth as if to kiss her_). Well, lass, you said you'd

surprise us. You have and all. Biggest surprise I ever had. Wedding the

young master. Something like a match now this is.

Ruth. Don't, mother. I'm so ashamed.

Mary. Ashamed? Where's the shame in getting wed? We all come to it.

Matthew. And you've come to it rare and well. And me thinking in yonder

while Mr. Barlow talked to me I'd have small cause now to send young

Kelsall off, for I'm a factory hand myself the same as he.

Ruth. Poor Martin Kelsall.

Matthew. Aye, poor he is and rich you're going to be. You've little need

to think of Kelsall now.

Ruth. No. I mustn't think of Martin now. I'm doing what I meant to do.

I've got Guy Barlow.

Mary. Ruth, there'll be a lot of sewing to be done.

Ruth. Why?

Mary. Why? The girl's a-dream. Against your wedding to be sure. What

else are you thinking of?

Ruth. It's not my wedding that I'm thinking of. It's afterwards. Well,

I've begun. I'm going to see it through.

(_Ruth stares straight out, as into the future. The others are looking

at her._)

CURTAIN.