[The Duke and Doctor stare at him motionless; but the Rev. Smith starts and takes a step nearer the table. The Conjurer pulls his cloak round his shoulders. This gesture, as of departure, brings the Doctor to his feet.
Doctor. [Astonished and angry.] Do you really mean that you take the cheque and then tell us it was only magic?
Conjurer. [Pulling the cheque to pieces.] I tear the cheque, and I tell you it was only magic.
Doctor. [With violent sincerity.] But hang it all, there's no such thing.
Conjurer. Yes there is. I wish to God I did not know that there is.
Duke. [Rising also.] Why, really, magic....
Conjurer. [Contemptuously.] Yes, your Grace, one of those larger laws you were telling us about.
[He buttons his cloak up at his throat and takes up his bag. As he does so the Rev. Smith steps between him and the door and stops him for a moment.
Smith. [In a low voice.] One moment, sir.
Conjurer. What do you want?
Smith. I want to apologize to you. I mean on behalf of the company. I think it was wrong to offer you money. I think it was more wrong to mystify you with medical language and call the thing delirium. I have more respect for conjurer's patter than for doctor's patter. They are both meant to stupify; but yours only to stupify for a moment. Now I put it to you in plain words and on plain human Christian grounds. Here is a poor boy who may be going mad. Suppose you had a son in such a position, would you not expect people to tell you the whole truth if it could help you?
Conjurer. Yes. And I have told you the whole truth. Go and find out if it helps you.
[Turns again to go, but more irresolutely.
Smith. You know quite well it will not help us.
Conjurer. Why not?
Smith. You know quite well why not. You are an honest man; and you have said it yourself. Because he would not believe it.
Conjurer. [With a sort of fury.] Well, does anybody believe it? Do you believe it?
Smith. [With great restraint.] Your question is quite fair. Come, let us sit down and talk about it. Let me take your cloak.
Conjurer. I will take off my cloak when you take off your coat.
Smith. [Smiling.] Why? Do you want me to fight?
Conjurer. [Violently.] I want you to be martyred. I want you to bear witness to your own creed. I say these things are supernatural. I say this was done by a spirit. The Doctor does not believe me. He is an agnostic; and he knows everything. The Duke does not believe me; he cannot believe anything so plain as a miracle. But what the devil are you for, if you don't believe in a miracle? What does your coat mean, if it doesn't mean that there is such a thing as the supernatural? What does your cursed collar mean if it doesn't mean that there is such a thing as a spirit? [Exasperated.] Why the devil do you dress up like that if you don't believe in it? [With violence.] Or perhaps you don't believe in devils?
Smith. I believe.... [After a pause.] I wish I could believe.
Conjurer. Yes. I wish I could disbelieve.
[Enter Patricia pale and in the slight négligée of the amateur nurse.
Patricia. May I speak to the Conjurer?
Smith. [Hastening forward.] You want the Doctor?
Patricia. No, the Conjurer.
Doctor. Are there any developments?
Patricia. I only want to speak to the Conjurer.
[They all withdraw, either at the garden or the other doors. Patricia walks up to Conjurer.
Patricia. You must tell me how you did the trick. You will. I know you will. O, I know my poor brother was rude to you. He's rude to everybody! [Breaks down.] But he's such a little, little boy!
Conjurer. I suppose you know there are things men never tell to women. They are too horrible.
Patricia. Yes. And there are things women never tell to men. They also are too horrible. I am here to hear them all.
Conjurer. Do you really mean I may say anything I like? However dark it is? However dreadful it is? However damnable it is?
Patricia. I have gone through too much to be terrified now. Tell me the very worst.
Conjurer. I will tell you the very worst. I fell in love with you when I first saw you.
[Sits down and crosses his legs.
Patricia. [Drawing back.] You told me I looked like a child and....
Conjurer. I told a lie.
Patricia. O; this is terrible.
Conjurer. I was in love, I took an opportunity. You believed quite simply that I was a magician? but I....
Patricia. It is terrible. It is terrible. I never believed you were a magician.
Conjurer. [Astounded.] Never believed I was a magician...!
Patricia. I always knew you were a man.
Conjurer. [Doing whatever passionate things people do on the stage.] I am a man. And you are a woman. And all the elves have gone to elfland, and all the devils to hell. And you and I will walk out of this great vulgar house and be married.... Every one is crazy in this house to-night, I think. What am I saying? As if you could marry me! O my God!
Patricia. This is the first time you have failed in courage.
Conjurer. What do you mean?
Patricia. I mean to draw your attention to the fact that you have recently made an offer, I accept it.
Conjurer. Oh, it's nonsense, it's nonsense. How can a man marry an archangel, let alone a lady. My mother was a lady and she married a dying fiddler who tramped the roads; and the mixture plays the cat and banjo with my body and soul. I can see my mother now cooking food in dirtier and dirtier lodgings, darning socks with weaker and weaker eyes when she might have worn pearls by consenting to be a rational person.
Patricia. And she might have grown pearls, by consenting to be an oyster.
Conjurer. [Seriously.] There was little pleasure in her life.
Patricia. There is little, a very little, in everybody's. The question is, what kind? We can't turn life into a pleasure. But we can choose such pleasures as are worthy of us and our immortal souls. Your mother chose and I have chosen.
Conjurer. [Staring.] Immortal souls!... And I suppose if I knelt down to worship you, you and every one else would laugh.
Patricia. [With a smile of perversity.] Well, I think this is a more comfortable way. [She sits down suddenly beside him in a sort of domestic way and goes on talking.] Yes. I'll do everything your mother did, not so well, of course; I'll darn that conjurer's hat—does one darn hats?—and cook the Conjurer's dinner. By the way, what is a Conjurer's dinner? There's always the goldfish, of course....
Conjurer. [With a groan.] Carrots.
Patricia. And, of course, now I come to think of it, you can always take rabbits out of the hat. Why, what a cheap life it must be! How do you cook rabbits? The Duke is always talking about poached rabbits. Really, we shall be as happy as is good for us. We'll have confidence in each other at least, and no secrets. I insist on knowing all the tricks.
Conjurer. I don't think I know whether I'm on my head or my heels.
Patricia. And now, as we're going to be so confidential and comfortable, you'll just tell me the real, practical, tricky little way you did that last trick.
Conjurer. [Rising, rigid with horror.] How I did that trick? I did it by devils. [Turning furiously on Patricia.] You could believe in fairies. Can't you believe in devils?
Patricia. [Seriously.] No, I can't believe in devils.
Conjurer. Well, this room is full of them.
Patricia. What does it all mean?
Conjurer. It only means that I have done what many men have done; but few, I think, have thriven by. [He sits down and talks thoughtfully.] I told you I had mixed with many queer sets of people. Among others, I mixed with those who pretend, truly and falsely, to do our tricks by the aid of spirits. I dabbled a little in table-rapping and table-turning. But I soon had reason to give it up.
Patricia. Why did you give it up?
Conjurer. It began by giving me headaches. And I found that every morning after a Spiritualist séance I had a queer feeling of lowness and degradation, of having been soiled; much like the feeling, I suppose, that people have the morning after they have been drunk. But I happen to have what people call a strong head; and I have never been really drunk.
Patricia. I am glad of that.
Conjurer. It hasn't been for want of trying. But it wasn't long before the spirits with whom I had been playing at table-turning, did what I think they generally do at the end of all such table-turning.
Patricia. What did they do?
Conjurer. They turned the tables. They turned the tables upon me. I don't wonder at your believing in fairies. As long as these things were my servants they seemed to me like fairies. When they tried to be my masters.... I found they were not fairies. I found the spirits with whom I at least had come in contact were evil ... awfully, unnaturally evil.
Patricia. Did they say so?
Conjurer. Don't talk of what they said. I was a loose fellow, but I had not fallen so low as such things. I resisted them; and after a pretty bad time, psychologically speaking, I cut the connexion. But they were always tempting me to use the supernatural power I had got from them. It was not very great, but it was enough to move things about, to alter lights, and so on. I don't know whether you realize that it's rather a strain on a man to drink bad coffee at a coffee-stall when he knows he has just enough magic in him to make a bottle of champagne walk out of an empty shop.
Patricia. I think you behaved very well.
Conjurer. [Bitterly.] And when I fell at last it was for nothing half so clean and Christian as champagne. In black blind pride and anger and all kinds of heathenry, because of the impudence of a schoolboy, I called on the fiends and they obeyed.
Patricia. [Touches his arm.] Poor fellow!
Conjurer. Your goodness is the only goodness that never goes wrong.
Patricia. And what are we to do with Morris? I—I believe you now, my dear. But he—he will never believe.
Conjurer. There is no bigot like the atheist. I must think.
[Walks towards the garden windows. The other men reappear to arrest his movement.
Doctor. Where are you going?
Conjurer. I am going to ask the God whose enemies I have served if I am still worthy to save a child.
[Exit into garden. He paces up and down exactly as Morris has done. As he does so, Patricia slowly goes out; and a long silence follows, during which the remaining men stir and stamp very restlessly. The darkness increases. It is long before anyone speaks.
Doctor. [Abruptly.] Remarkable man that Conjurer. Clever man. Curious man. Very curious man. A kind of man, you know.... Lord bless us! What's that?
Duke. What's what, eh? What's what?
Doctor. I swear I heard a footstep.
Enter Hastings with papers.
Duke. Why, Hastings—Hastings—we thought you were a ghost. You must be—er—looking white or something.
Hastings. I have brought back the answer of the Anti-Vegetarians ... I mean the Vegetarians.
[Drops one or two papers.
Duke. Why, Hastings, you are looking white.
Hastings. I ask your Grace's pardon. I had a slight shock on entering the room.
Doctor. A shock? What shock?
Hastings. It is the first time, I think, that your Grace's work has been disturbed by any private feelings of mine. I shall not trouble your Grace with them. It will not occur again.
[Exit Hastings.
Duke. What an extraordinary fellow. I wonder if....
[Suddenly stops speaking.
Doctor. [After a long silence, in a low voice to Smith.] How do you feel?
Smith. I feel I must have a window shut or I must have it open, and I don't know which it is.
[Another long silence.
Smith. [Crying out suddenly in the dark.] In God's name, go!
Doctor. [Jumping up rather in a tremble.] Really, sir, I am not used to being spoken to....
Smith. It was not you whom I told to go.
Doctor. No. [Pause.] But I think I will go. This room is simply horrible.
[He marches towards the door.
Duke. [Jumping up and bustling about, altering cards, papers, etc., on tables.] Room horrible? Room horrible? No, no, no. [Begins to run quicker round the room, flapping his hands like fins.] Only a little crowded. A little crowded. And I don't seem to know all the people. We can't like everybody. These large at-homes....
[Tumbles on to a chair.
Conjurer. [Reappearing at the garden doors.] Go back to hell from which I called you. It is the last order I shall give.
Doctor. [Rising rather shakily.] And what are you going to do?
Conjurer. I am going to tell that poor little lad a lie. I have found in the garden what he did not find in the garden. I have managed to think of a natural explanation of that trick.
Doctor. [Warmly moved.] I think you are something like a great man. Can I take your explanation to him now?
Conjurer. [Grimly.] No thank you. I will take it myself.
[Exit into the other room.
Duke. [Uneasily.] We all felt devilish queer just now. Wonderful things there are in the world. [After a pause.] I suppose it's all electricity.
[Silence as usual.
Smith. I think there has been more than electricity in all this.
Enter Patricia, still pale, but radiant.
Patricia. Oh, Morris is ever so much better! The Conjurer has told him such a good story of how the trick was done.
Enter Conjurer.
Duke. Professor, we owe you a thousand thanks!
Doctor. Really, you have doubled your claim to originality!
Smith. It is much more marvellous to explain a miracle than to work a miracle. What was your explanation, by the way?
Conjurer. I shall not tell you.
Smith. [Starting.] Indeed? Why not?
Conjurer. Because God and the demons and that Immortal Mystery that you deny has been in this room to-night. Because you know it has been here. Because you have felt it here. Because you know the spirits as well as I do and fear them as much as I do.
Smith. Well?
Conjurer. Because all this would not avail. If I told you the lie I told Morris Carleon about how I did that trick....
Smith. Well?
Conjurer. You would believe it as he believed it. You cannot think [pointing to the lamp] how that trick could be done naturally. I alone found out how it could be done—after I had done it by magic. But if I tell you a natural way of doing it....
Smith. Well?...
Conjurer. Half an hour after I have left this house you will be all saying how it was done.
[Conjurer buttons up his cloak and advances to Patricia.
Conjurer. Good-bye.
Patricia. I shall not say good-bye.
Conjurer. You are great as well as good. But a saint can be a temptress as well as a sinner. I put my honour in your hands ... oh, yes, I have a little left. We began with a fairy tale. Have I any right to take advantage of that fairy tale? Has not that fairy tale really and truly come to an end?
Patricia. Yes. That fairy tale has really and truly come to an end. [Looks at him a little in the old mystical manner.] It is very hard for a fairy tale to come to an end. If you leave it alone it lingers everlastingly. Our fairy tale has come to an end in the only way a fairy tale can come to an end. The only way a fairy tale can leave off being a fairy tale.
Conjurer. I don't understand you.
Patricia. It has come true.
CURTAIN
A Selection from the Catalogue of
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Complete Catalogue sent on application
New Comedies
By
LADY GREGORY
The Bogie Men—The Full Moon—Coats
Damer's Gold—McDonough's Wife
8°. With Portrait in Photogravure. $1.50 net. By mail, $1.65
The plays have been acted with great success by the Abbey Company, and have been highly extolled by appreciative audiences and an enthusiastic press. They are distinguished by a humor of unchallenged originality.
One of the plays in the collection, "Coats," depends for its plot upon the rivalry of two editors, each of whom has written an obituary notice of the other. The dialogue is full of crisp humor. "McDonough's Wife," another drama that appears in the volume, is based on a legend, and explains how a whole town rendered honor against its will. "The Bogie Men" has as its underlying situation an amusing misunderstanding of two chimney-sweeps. The wit and absurdity of the dialogue are in Lady Gregory's best vein. "Damer's Gold" contains the story of a miser beset by his gold-hungry relations. Their hopes and plans are upset by one they had believed to be of the simple of the world, but who confounds the Wisdom of the Wise. "The Full Moon" presents a little comedy enacted on an Irish railway station. It is characterized by humor of an original and delightful character and repartee that is distinctly clever.
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON
Irish Plays
By
LADY GREGORY
Lady Gregory's name has become a household word in America and her works should occupy an exclusive niche in every library. Mr. George Bernard Shaw, in a recently published interview, said Lady Gregory "is the greatest living Irishwoman.... Even in the plays of Lady Gregory, penetrated as they are by that intense love of Ireland which is unintelligible to the many drunken blackguards with Irish names who make their nationality an excuse for their vices and their worthlessness, there is no flattery of the Irish; she writes about the Irish as Molière wrote about the French, having a talent curiously like Molière."
"The witchery of Yeats, the vivid imagination of Synge, the amusing literalism mixed with the pronounced romance of their imitators, have their place and have been given their praise without stint. But none of these can compete with Lady Gregory for the quality of universality. The best beauty in Lady Gregory's art is its spontaneity. It is never forced.... She has read and dreamed and studied, and slept and wakened and worked, and the great ideas that have come to her have been nourished and trained till they have grown to be of great stature."—Chicago Tribune.
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON
Irish Folk-History Plays
By
LADY GREGORY
First Series. The Tragedies
GRANIA
KINCORA
DERVORGILLA
Second Series. The Tragic Comedies
THE CANAVANS
THE WHITE COCKADE
THE DELIVERER
2 vols. Each, $1.50 net. By mail, $1.65
Lady Gregory has preferred going for her material to the traditional folk-history rather than to the authorized printed versions, and she has been able, in so doing, to make her plays more living. One of these, Kincora, telling of Brian Boru, who reigned in the year 1000, evoked such keen local interest that an old farmer travelled from the neighborhood of Kincora to see it acted in Dublin.
The story of Grania, on which Lady Gregory has founded one of these plays, was taken entirely from tradition. Grania was a beautiful young woman and was to have been married to Finn, the great leader of the Fenians; but before the marriage, she went away from the bridegroom with his handsome young kinsman, Diarmuid. After many years, when Diarmuid had died (and Finn had a hand in his death), she went back to Finn and became his queen.
Another of Lady Gregory's plays, The Canavans dealt with the stormy times of Queen Elizabeth, whose memory is a horror in Ireland second only to that of Cromwell.
The White Cockade is founded on a tradition of King James having escaped from Ireland after the battle of the Boyne in a wine barrel.
The choice of folk history rather than written history gives a freshness of treatment and elasticity of material which made the late J.M. Synge say that "Lady Gregory's method had brought back the possibility of writing historic plays."
All these plays, except Grania, which has not yet been staged, have been very successfully performed in Ireland. They are written in the dialect of Kiltartan, which had already become familiar to leaders of Lady Gregory's books.
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON
Dramas of Importance
Plays
The Silver Box—Joy—Strife
By John Galsworthy
Author of "The Country House," etc.
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Yzdra
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