Alice Sit-By-The-Fire, Sir James Matthew Barrie [best books to read fiction TXT] 📗

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STEVE. 'What are you doing?'

COLONEL. 'Trying to find out for myself whether she comes here.'

STEVE. 'How can you find that out by crawling about my carpet?'

COLONEL. 'I am looking for hair-pins--triumphantly holding up a lady's glove--'and I have found one!'

They have been too engrossed to hear the bell ring, but now voices are audible.

STEVE. 'There is some one coming up.'

COLONEL. 'Perhaps it is _she_, Steve! No, that is Alice's voice. Catch, you scoundrel,' and he tosses him the glove. Alice is shown in, and is warmly acclaimed. She would not feel so much at ease if she knew who, hand on heart, has recognised her through the pantry key-hole.

STEVE, as he makes Alice comfortable by the fire, 'How did you leave them at home?'

ALICE, relapsing into gloom, 'All hating me.'

STEVE. 'This man says that home is the most delightful club in the world.'

ALICE. 'I am not a member; I have been blackballed by my own baby. Robert, I dined in state with Cosmo, and he was so sulky that he ate his fish without salt rather than ask me to pass it.'

COLONEL. 'Where was Amy?'

ALICE. 'Amy said she had a headache and went to bed. I spoke to her through the door before I came out, but she wouldn't answer.'

COLONEL. 'Why didn't you go in, memsahib?'

ALICE. 'I did venture to think of it, but she had locked the door. Robert, I really am worried about Amy. She seems to me to behave oddly. There can't be anything wrong?'

COLONEL. 'Of course not, Alice--eh, Steve?'

STEVE. 'Bless you, no.'

ALICE, smiling, 'It's much Steve knows about women.'

STEVE. 'I'm not so unattractive to women, Alice, as you think.'

ALICE. 'Listen to him, Robert!'

COLONEL. 'What he means, my dear, is that you should see him with elderly ladies.'

ALICE. 'Steve, this to people who know you.' Here something happens to Amy's skirt. She has opened the door to hear, then in alarm shut it, leaving a fragment of skirt caught in the door. There, unseen, it bides its time.

STEVE, darkly, 'Don't be so sure you know me, Alice.'

COLONEL, enjoying himself, 'Let us tell her, Steve! I am dying to tell her.'

STEVE, grandly, 'No, no.'

COLONEL. 'We mustn't tell you, Alice, because it is a woman's secret--a poor little fond elderly woman. Our friend is very proud of his conquest. See how he is ruffling his feathers. I shouldn't wonder you know, though you and I are in the way to-night.'

But Alice's attention is directed in another direction: to a little white object struggling in the clutches of a closed door at the back of the room. Steve turns to see what she is looking at, and at the same moment the door opens sufficiently to allow a pretty hand to obtrude, seize the kitten, or whatever it was, and softly reclose the door. For one second Alice did think it might be a kitten, but she knows now that it is part of a woman's dress. As for Steve thus suddenly acquainted with his recent visitor's whereabouts, his mouth opens wider than the door. He appeals mutely to Alice not to betray his strange secret to the Colonel.

ALICE, with dancing eyes, 'May I look about me, Steve? I have been neglecting your room shamefully.'

STEVE, alarmed, for he knows the woman, 'Don't get up, Alice; there is really nothing to see.' But she is already making the journey of the room, and drawing nearer to the door.

ALICE, playing with him, 'I like your clock.'

STEVE. 'It is my landlady's. Nearly all the things are hers. Do come back to the fire.'

ALICE. 'Don't mind me. What does this door lead into?'

STEVE. 'Only a cupboard.'

ALICE. 'What do you keep in it?'

STEVE. 'Merely crockery--that sort of thing.'

ALICE. 'I should like to see your crockery, Steve. Not one little bit of china? May I peep in?'

COLONEL, who is placidly smoking, with his back to the scene of the drama, 'Don't mind her, Steve; she never could see a door without itching to open it.'

Alice opens the door, and sees Amy standing there with her finger to her lips, just as they stood in all the five plays. Ginevra could not have posed her better.

'Well, have you found anything, memsahib?'

It has been the great shock of Alice's life, and she sways. But she shuts the door before answering him.

ALICE, with a terrible look at Steve, 'Just a dark little cupboard.'

Steve, not aware that it is her daughter who is in there, wonders why the lighter aspect of the incident has ceased so suddenly to strike her. She returns to the fire, but not to her chair. She puts her arms round the neck of her husband; a great grief for him is welling up in her breast.

COLONEL, so long used to her dear impulsive ways, 'Hullo! We mustn't let on that we are fond of each other before company.'

STEVE, meaning well, though he had better have held his tongue, 'I don't count; I am such an old friend.'

ALICE, slowly, 'Such an old friend!' Her husband sees that she is struggling with some emotion.

COLONEL. 'Worrying about the children still, Alice?'

ALICE, glad to break down openly, 'Yes, yes, I can't help it, Robert.'

COLONEL, petting her, 'There, there, you foolish woman. Joy will come in the morning; I never was surer of anything. Would you like me to take you home now?'

ALICE. 'Home. But, yes, I--let us go home.'

COLONEL. 'Can we have a cab, Steve?'

STEVE. 'I'll go down and whistle one. Alice, I'm awfully sorry that you--that I--'

ALICE. 'Please, a cab.'

But though she is alone with her husband now she does not know what she wants to say to him. She has a passionate desire that he should not learn who is behind that door.

COLONEL, pulling her toward him, 'I think it is about Amy that you worry most.'

ALICE. 'Why should I, Robert?'

COLONEL. 'Not a jot of reason.'

ALICE. 'Say again, Robert, that everything is sure to come right just as we planned it would.'

COLONEL. 'Of course it will.'

ALICE. 'Robert, there is something I want to tell you. You know how dear my children are to me, but Amy is the dearest of all. She is dearer to me, Robert, than you yourself.'

COLONEL. 'Very well, memsahib.'

ALICE. 'Robert dear, Amy has come to a time in her life when she is neither quite a girl nor quite a woman. There are dark places before us at that age through which we have to pick our way without much help. I can conceive dead mothers haunting those places to watch how their child is to fare in them. Very frightened ghosts, Robert. I have thought so long of how I was to be within hail of my girl at this time, holding her hand--my Amy, my child.'

COLONEL. 'That is just how it is all to turn out, my Alice.'

ALICE, shivering, 'Yes, isn't it, isn't it?'

COLONEL. 'You dear excitable, of course it is.'

ALICE, like one defying him, 'But even though it were not, though I had come back too late, though my daughter had become a woman without a mother's guidance, though she were a bad woman--'

COLONEL. 'Alice.'

ALICE. 'Though some cur of a man--Robert, it wouldn't affect my love for her, I should love her more than ever. If all others turned from her, if you turned from her, Robert--how I should love her then.'

COLONEL. 'Alice, don't talk of such things.'

But she continues to talk of them, for she sees that the door is ajar, and what she says now is really to comfort Amy. Every word of it is a kiss for Amy.

ALICE, smiling through her fears, 'I was only telling you that nothing could make any difference in my love for Amy. That was all; and, of course, if she has ever been a little foolish, light-headed--at that age one often is--why, a mother would soon put all that right; she would just take her girl in her arms and they would talk it over, and the poor child's troubles would vanish.' Still for Amy's comfort, 'And do you think I should repeat any of Amy's confidences to you, Robert?' Gaily, 'Not a word, sir! She might be sure of that.'

COLONEL. 'A pretty way to treat a father. But you will never persuade me that there is any serious flaw in Amy.'

ALICE. 'I'll never try, dear.'

COLONEL. 'As for this little tantrum of locking herself into her room, however, we must have it out with her.'

ALICE. 'The first thing to-morrow.'

COLONEL. 'Not a bit of it. The first thing the moment we get home.'

ALICE, now up against a new danger, 'You forget, dear, that she has gone to bed.'

COLONEL. 'We'll soon rout her out of bed.'

ALICE. 'Robert! You forget that she has locked the door.'

COLONEL. 'Sulky little darling. I daresay she is crying her eyes out for you already. But if she doesn't open that door pretty smartly I'll force it.'

ALICE. 'You wouldn't do that?'

COLONEL. 'Wouldn't I? Oh yes, I would.'

Thus Alice has another problem to meet when Steve returns from his successful quest for a cab.

'Thank you, Steve, you will excuse us running off, I know. Alice is all nerves to-night. Come along, dear.'

ALICE, signing to the puzzled Steve that he must somehow get the lady out of the house at once, 'There is no such dreadful hurry, is there?' She is suddenly interested in some photographs on the wall. 'Are you in this group, Steve?'

STEVE. 'Yes, it is an old school eleven.'

ALICE. 'Let us see if we can pick Steve out, Robert.'

COLONEL. 'Here he is, the one with the ball.'

ALICE. 'Oh no, that can't be Steve, surely. Isn't this one more like him? Come over here under the light.'

Steve has his moment at the door, but it is evident from his face that the hidden one scorns his blandishments. So he signs to Alice.

COLONEL. 'This is you, isn't it, Steve?'

STEVE. 'Yes, the one with the ball.'

COLONEL. 'I found you at once. Now, Alice, your cloak.'

ALICE. 'I feel so comfy where I am. One does hate to leave a fire, doesn't one.' She hums gaily a snatch of a song.

COLONEL. 'The woman doesn't know her own mind.'

ALICE. 'You remember we danced to that once on my birthday at Simla.'

She shows him how they danced at Simla.

COLONEL, to Steve, who is indeed the more bewildered of the two, 'And a few minutes ago I assure you she was weeping on my shoulder!'

ALICE. 'You were so nice to me that evening, Robert--I gave you a dance.' She whirls him gaily round.

COLONEL. 'You flibberty jibbet, you make me dizzy.'

ALICE. 'Shall we sit out the rest of the dance?'

COLONEL. 'Not I. Come along, you unreasonable thing.'

ALICE. 'Unreasonable. Robert, I have a reason. I want to see whether Amy will come.'

COLONEL. 'Come?'

STEVE. 'Come here?'

ALICE. 'I didn't tell you before, Robert, because I had so little hope; but I