by Half Hours
MRS. PAGE (gallantly). To this. I am com ing to 'this/ Charles. (Confidentially; no one can be quite so delightfully con fidential as BEATRICE PAGE.) You see, never having been more than twenty-nine, not even in my sleep for we have to keep it up even in our sleep I began to wonder what middle-age was like. I wanted to feel the sensation. A woman's curiosity, Charles.
CHARLES. Still, you couldn't
MRS. PAGE. Couldn't I! Listen. Two
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summers ago, instead of going to Biarritz see pictures of me in the illustrated papers stepping into my motor-car, or going a round of country houses see photographs of us all on the steps the names, Charles, read from left to right instead of doing any of these things I pretended I went there, and in reality I came down here, determined for a whole calendar month to be a middle-aged lady. I had to get some new clothes, real, cosy, sloppy, very middle-aged clothes; and that is why I invented mamma; I got them for her, you see. I said she was about my figure, but stouter and shorter, as you see she is.
CHARLES (his eyes wandering up and down her and nowhere a familiar place). I can't make out
MRS. PAGE. No, you are too nice a boy to make it out. You don't understand the difference that a sober way of doing one's hair, and the letting out of a few strings,
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and sundry other trifles that are no trifles, make; but you see I vowed that if the immortal part of me was to get a novel sort of rest, my figure should get it also. Voila! And thus all cosy within and without, I took lodgings in the most out-of-the-world spot I knew of, in the hope that here I might find the lady of whom I was in search.
CHARLES. Meaning?
MRS. PAGE (rather grimly). Meaning myself. Until two years ago she and I had never met.
CHARLES (the cynic). And how do you like her?
MRS. PAGE. Better than you do, young sir. She is really rather nice. I don't suppose I could do with her all the year round, but for a month or so I am just wallow ing in her. You remember my entrancing little shoes? (she wickedly exposes her flapping slippers). At local dances I sit out deliciously as a wall-flower. Drop a
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tear, Charles, for me as a wall-flower.
I play cards, and the engaged ladies give
me their confidences as a dear old thing;
and I never, never dream of setting my
cap at their swains. CHARLES. How strange. You who, when
you liked
MRS. PAGE (plaintively). Yes, couldn't I,
Charles? CHARLES (falling into the snare). It was just
the wild gaiety of you. MRS. PAGE (who is in the better position to
know). It was the devilry of me. CHARLES. Whatever it was, it bewitched
us. MRS. PAGE (candidly, but forgiving herself).
It oughtn't to. CHARLES. If you weren't all glee you were
the saddest thing on earth. MRS. PAGE. But I shouldn't have been sad
on your shoulders, Charles. CHARLES (appealing). You weren't sad on
all our shoulders, were you ?
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MRS. PAGE (reassuring). No, not all.
Oh the gladness of her gladness when she's glad,
And the sadness of her sadness when she's sad,
But the gladness of her gladness
And the sadness of her sadness
Are as nothing, Charles,
To the badness of her badness when she's bad.
(This dagger-to-her-breast business is one of her choicest tricks of fence, and is very dangerous if you can coo like Beatrice.)
CHARLES (pinked). Not a word against your self.
MRS. PAGE (already seeing what she has been up to). Myself! I suppose even now I am only playing a part. CHARLES (who has become her handkerchief).
No, no, this is your real self. MRS. PAGE (warily). Is it? I wonder. CHARLES. I never knew any one who had
deeper feelings.
MRS. PAGE. Oh, I am always ready with whatever feeling is called for. I have a
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wardrobe of them, Charles. Don't blame me, blame the public of whom you are one; the pitiless public that has made me what I am. I am their slave and their plaything, and when I please them they fling me nuts. (Her voice breaks, no voice can break so naturally as BEATRICE'S.) I would have been a darling of a wife don't you think so, Charles? but they wouldn't let me. I am only a bundle of emotions; I have two characters for each day of the week. Home became a less thing to me than a new part. Charles, if only I could have been a nobody. Can't you picture me, such a happy, unknown woman, dancing along some sandy shore with half a dozen little boys and girls hanging on to my skirts? When my son was old enough, wouldn't he and I have made a rather pretty picture for the king the day he joined his ship. And I think most of
134 ROSALIND
all I should have loved to deck out m» daughter in her wedding-gown.
When her mother tends her before the laughing
mirror, Tying up her laces, looping up her hair
But the public wouldn't have it, and I had to pay the price of my success.
CHARLES (heart-broken for thai wet face). Beatrice !
MRS. PAGE. I became a harum-scarum, Charles; sometimes very foolish (With a queer insight into herself) chiefly through good-nature I think. There were moments when there was nothing I wouldn't do, so long as I was all right for the play at night. Nothing else seemed to matter. I have kicked over all the traces, my friend. You remember the Scottish poet who
Keenly felt the friendly glow
And softer flame, But thoughtless follies laid him low
And stained his name.
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(Sadly enough) Thoughtless follies laid her low, Charles, and stained her name.
CHARLES (ready to fling down his glove in her defence). I don't believe it. No, no, Beatrice Mrs. Page
MRS. PAGE. Ah, it 's Mrs. Page now.
CHARLES. You are crying.
MRS. PAGE (with some satisfaction). Yes, I am crying.
CHARLES. This is terrible to me. I never dreamt your life was such a tragedy.
MRS. PAGE (coming to). Don't be so con cerned. I am crying, but all the time I am looking at you through the corner of my eye to see if I am doing it well.
CHARLES (hurt). Don't don't.
MRS. PAGE (well aware that she will always be her best audience). Soon I '11 be laugh ing again. When I have cried, Charles, then it is time for me to laugh.
CHARLES. Please, I wish you wouldn't.
MRS. PAGE (already in the grip of another devil). And from all this, Charles, you
136 ROSALIND
have so nobly offered to save me. You are prepared to take me away from this dreadful life and let me be my real self. (CHARLES distinctly blushes.) Charles, it is dear and kind of you, and I accept your offer. (She gives him a come-and- tdke-me curtsey and awaits his rapturous response. The referee counts ten, but CHARLES has not risen from the floor. Goose that he is; she trills with merriment, though there is a touch of bitterness in it.) You see the time for laughing has come already. You really thought I wanted you, you conceited boy. (Rather grandly) I am not for the likes of you.
CHARLES (abject). Don't mock me. I am very unhappy.
MRS. PAGE (putting her hand on his shoulder in her dangerous, careless, kindly way). There, there, it is just a game. All life 's a game.
(It is here that the telegram comes. MRS. QUICKLY brings it in; and the
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better to read it, but with a glance at CHARLES to observe the effect on him y MRS. PAGE puts on her large horn spectacles. He sighs.) DAME. Is there any answer? The girl is
waiting. MRS. PAGE. No answer, thank you.
(MRS. QUICKLY goes, wondering what those two have had to say to each other.) CHARLES (glad to be a thousand miles away from
recent matters). Not bad news, I hope? MRS. PAGE (wiping her spectacles). From my manager. It is in cipher, but what it means is that t
he summer play isn't drawing, and that they have decided to revive As You Like It. They want me back to rehearse to-morrow at eleven. CHARLES (indignant). They can't even let you
have a few weeks.
MRS. PAGE (returning from London). What? Heigho, is it not sad? But I had been warned that this might happen.
138 ROSALIND
CHARLES (evolving schemes). Surely if you- (But she has summoned MRS. QUICKLY.)
MRS. PAGE (plaintively). Alas, Dame, our pleasant gossips have ended for this year. I am called back to London hurriedly.
DAME. Oh dear, the pity ! (She has already asked herself what might be in the telegram.) Your girl has come back, and she wants you ? Is that it ?
MRS. PAGE. That 's about it. (Her quiet, sad manner says that we must all dree our weird.) I must go. Have I time to catch the express ?
CHARLES (dispirited). It leaves at seven.
MRS. PAGE (bravely). I think I can do it. Is that the train you are to take ?
CHARLES. Yes, but only to the next station.
MRS. PAGE (grown humble in her misfortune). Even for that moment of your company I shall be grateful. Dame, this gentle man turns out to be a friend of Beatrice.
DAME. So he said, but I suspicioned him.
MRS. PAGE. Well, he is. Mr. Roche, this is
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my kind Dame. I must put a few things together.
DAME. If I can help
* MRS. PAGE. You can send on my luggage to morrow; but here is one thing you might do now. Run down to the Rectory and tell them why I can't be there for the cutting-out. DAME. I will.
MRS. PAGE. I haven't many minutes. Good-bye, you dear, for I shall be gone before you get back. I '11 write and settle everything. (With a last look round) Cosy room ! I have had a lovely time.
(Her face quivers a little, but she does not break down. She passes, a courageous figure, into the bedroom. The slippers plop as she mounts the steps to it. Her back looks older than we have seen it; at least such is its intention.)
DAME (who has learned the uselessness of rail ing against fate). Dearie dear, what a pity.
140 ROSALIND
CHARLES (less experienced}. It 's horrible.
DAME (wisely turning fate into a gossip). Queer to think of a lady like Mrs. Page having a daughter that jumps about for a living. (Good God, thinks CHARLES, how little this woman knows of life.) What I sometimes fear is that the daughter doesn't take much care of her. I dare say she 's fond of her, but does she do the little kind things for her that a lady come Mrs. Page's age needs ?
CHARLES (wincing). She 's not so old.
DAME (whose mind is probably running on breakfast in bed and such-like matters). No, but at our age we are fond of of quiet, and I doubt she doesn't get it.
CHARLES. I know she doesn't.
DAME (stumbling among fine words which attract her like a display of drapery). She says it 's her right to be out of the hurly- burly and into what she calls the delicious twilight of middle-age.
CHARLES (with dizzying thoughts in his brain).
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If she is so fond of it, isn't it a shame she should have to give it up ? DAME. The living here. CHARLES. Not so much that as being middle- aged.
DAME. Give up being middle-aged! How could she do that ?
(He is saved replying by MRS. PAGE,
who calls from the bedroom.) MRS. PAGE. Dame, I hear you talking, and you promised to go at once.
(The DAME apologises, and is off. CHARLES is left alone with his great resolve, which is no less than to do one of the fine things of history. It carries him toward the bedroom door, bid not quickly; one can also see that it has a rival who is urging him to fly the house.) CHARLES (with a drum beating inside him).
Beatrice, I want to speak to you at once. MRS. PAGE (through the closed door). As soon as I have packed my bag.
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CHARLES (finely). Don't pack it.
MRS. PAGE. I must.
CHARLES. I have something to say.
MRS. PAGE. I can hear you.
CHARLES (who had been honourably mentioned for the school prize poem). Beatrice, until now I hadn't really known you at all. The girl I was so fond of, there wasn't any such girl.
MRS. PAGE. Oh yes, indeed there was.
CHARLES (now in full sail for a hero's crown). There was the dear woman who was Rosalind, but she had tired of it. Rosa lind herself grew old and gave up the forest of Arden, but there was one man who never forgot the magic of her being there; and I shall never forget yours. (Strange that between the beatings of the drum he should hear a little voice within him calling, 'Ass, Charles, you ass! 9 or words to that effect. But he runs nobly on.) My dear, I want to be your Orlando to the end. (Surely nothing could be grander. He
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is chagrined to get no response beyond what might be the breaking of a string.) Do you hear me ? MRS. PAGE. Yes. (A brief answer, but he is
off again.)
CHARLES. I will take you out of that hurly- burly and accompany you into the de licious twilight of middle-age. I shall be staid in manner so as not to look too young, and I will make life easy for you in your declining years. ('Ass, Charles, you ass! ') Beatrice, do come out. MRS. PAGE. I am coming now. (She comes out carrying her bag.) You naughty Charles, I heard you proposing to mamma. (The change that has come over her is far too subtle to have grown out of a wish to surprise him, but its effect on CHARLES is as if she had struck him in the face.
Too subtle also to be only an affair of clothes, though she is now in bravery hot from Mdme. Make-the-woman
144 ROSALIND
tackle by Monsieur, a Rosalind cap jaunty on her head, her shoes so small that one wonders if she ever has to light a candle to look for her feet. She is a tall, slim young creature, easily breakable; svelte is the word that encompasses her as we watch the flow of her figure, her head arching on its long stem, and the erect shoulders that we seem, God bless us, to remember as a little hunched. Her eyes dance with life but are easily startled, because they are looking fresh upon the world, wild notes in them as from the woods. Not a woman this but a maid, or so it seems to CHARLES. She has been thinking very little about him, but is properly gratified by what she reads in his face.)
Do I surprise you as much as that,
Charles ?
(She puts down her bag, BEATRICE
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PAGE'S famous bag. If you do not know it, you do not, alas, know BEATRICE. It is seldom out of her hand, save when cavaliers h ave been sent in search of it. She is always late for everything except her call, and at the last moment she sweeps all that is most precious to her into the bag, and runs. Jewels? Oh no, pooh; letters from nobodies, postal orders for them, a piece of cretonne that must match she forgets what, bits of string she forgets why, a book given her by darling Whas-his-name, a broken miniature, part of a watch- chain, a dog's collar, such a neat parcel tied with ribbon (golden gift or biscuits? she means to find out some day), a purse, but not the right one, a bottle of gum without a cork, and a hundred good-natured scatter-brained things besides. Her servants (who all adore her) hate the bag as if it were a
146 ROSALIND
little dog; swains hate it because it gets lost and has to be found in the middle of a declaration; managers hate it because she carries it at rehearsals, when it bursts open suddenly like a too tightly laced lady, and its contents are spread on the stage; authors make engaging remarks about it until they discover that it has an artful trick of bursting because she does not know her lines. If you complain, really furious this time, she takes you all in her arms. Well, well, but what we meant to say was that when BEATRICE sees CHARLES'S surprise she puts down her bag.) CHARLES. Good God! Is there nothing real in life?
(She curves toward him in one of those swallow-flights which will haunt the stage long after BEATRICE PAGE is but a memory. What they say and how they said it soon passes
ROSALIND 147
away; what
lives on is the pretty movements like BEATRICE'S swallow- flights. All else may go, even the golden voices go y but the pretty move- ments remain and play about the stage for ever. They are the only ghosts of the theatre.}
MRS. PAGE. Heaps of things. Rosalind is real, and I am Rosalind; and the forest of Arden is real, and I am going back to it; and cakes and ale are real, and I am to eat and drink them again. Everything is real except middle-age.
(She puts her hand on his shoulder in the old, dangerous, kindly, too friendly way. That impulsive trick of yours, madam, has a deal to answer for.)
CHARLES. But you said
(She flings up her hands in mockery; they are such subtle hands that she can stand with her back to you, and, putting them behind her, let them play the drama.)
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MRS. PAGE. I said ! (She is gone from him in another flight.} I am Rosalind and I am going back. Hold me down, Charles, unless you want me to go mad with glee.
CHARLES (gripping her). I feel as if in the room you came out of you have left the woman who went into it five minutes ago.
MRS. PAGE (slipping from him as she slips from all of us). I have, Charles, I have. I left the floppy, sloppy, old frump in a trunk to be carted to the nearest place where they store furniture; and I tell you, my friend (she might have said friends, for it is a warning to the Charleses of every age), if I had a husband and children I would cram them on top of the cart if they sought to come between me and Arden.
CHARLES (with a shiver). Beatrice!
MRS. PAGE. The stage is waiting, the audience is calling, and up goes the cur tain. Oh, my public, my little dears,
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come and foot it again in the forest, and tuck away your double chins.
