Limbo

THE scene is a conservatory. Luxuriant tropical plants are seen looming through a greenish aquarium twilight, punctuated here and there by the surprising pink of several Chinese lanterns hanging from the roof or on the branches of trees, while a warm yellow radiance streams out from the ball-room by a door on the left of the scene. Through the glass of the conservatory, at the back of the stage, one perceives a black-and-white landscape under the moon--expanses of snow, lined and dotted with coal-black hedges and trees. Outside is frost and death: but within the conservatory all is palpitating and steaming with tropical life and heat. Enormous fantastic plants encumber it; trees, creepers that writhe with serpentine life, orchids of every kind. Everywhere dense vegetation; horrible flowers that look like bottled spiders, like suppurating wounds; flowers with eyes and tongues, with moving, sensitive tentacles, with breasts and teeth and spotted skins. The strains of a waltz float in through the ball-room door, and to that slow, soft music there enter, in parallel processions, the two families which are respectively Mr. Aston J. Tyrrell and Miss Topsy Garrick. The doyen of the Tyrrell family is a young and perhaps too cultured literary man with rather long, dark brown hair, a face well cut and sensitive, if a trifle weak about the lower jaw, and a voice whose exquisite modulations could only be the product of education at one of the two Great Universities. We will call him plain Aston. Miss Topsy, the head of the Garrick family, is a young woman of not quite twenty, with sleek, yellow hair hanging, like a page's, short and thick about her ears; boyish, too, in her slenderness and length of leg--boyish, but feminine and attractive to the last degree. Miss Topsy paints charmingly, sings in a small, pure voice that twists the heart and makes the bowels yearn in the hearing of it, is well educated, and has read, or at least heard of, most of the best books in three languages, knows something, too, of economics and the doctrines of Freud. They enter arm in arm, fresh from the dance, trailing behind them with their disengaged hands two absurd ventriloquist's dummies of themselves. They sit down on a bench placed in the middle of the stage under a kind of arbour festooned with fabulous flowers. The other members of the two families lurk in the tropical twilight of the background. Aston advances his dummy and makes it speak, moving its mouth and limbs appropriately by means of the secret levers which his hand controls. ASTON'S DUMMY. What a perfect floor it is to-night! TOPSY'S DUMMY. Yes, it's like ice, isn't it? And such a good band. ASTON'S DUMMY. Oh yes, a very good band. TOPSY'S DUMMY. They play at dinner-time at the Necropole, you know. ASTON'S DUMMY. Really! (_A long, uncomfortable silence._) (_From under a lofty twangum tree emerges the figure of CAIN WASHINGTON TYRRELL, ASTON'S negro brother--for the TYRRELLS, I regret to say, have a lick of the tar-brush in them and CAIN is a Mendelian throwback to the pure Jamaican type. CAIN is stout and his black face shines with grease. The whites of his eyes are like enamel, his smile is chryselephantine. He is dressed in faultless evening dress and a ribbon of seals tinkles on his stomach. He walks with legs wide apart, the upper part of his body thrown back and his belly projecting, as though he were supporting the weight of an Aristophanic actor's costume. He struts up and down in front of the couple on the seat, grinning and slapping himself on the waistcoat._) CAIN. What hair, nyum nyum! and the nape of her neck; and her body--how slender! and what lovely movements, nyum nyum! (_Approaching ASTON and speaking into his ear._) Eh? eh? eh? ASTON. Go away, you pig. Go away. (_He holds up his dummy as a shield: CAIN retires discomfited._) ASTON'S DUMMY. Have you read any amusing novels lately? TOPSY. (_Speaking over the head of her dummy._) No; I never read novels. They are mostly so frightful, aren't they? ASTON. (_Enthusiastically._) How splendid! Neither do I. I only write them sometimes, that's all. (_They abandon their dummies, which fall limply into one another's arms and collapse on to the floor with an expiring sigh._) TOPSY. You write them? I didn't know. . . . ASTON. Oh, I'd very much rather you didn't know. I shouldn't like you ever to read one of them. They're all awful: still, they keep the pot boiling, you know. But tell me, what do you read? TOPSY. Mostly history, and philosophy, and a little criticism and psychology, and lots of poetry. ASTON. My dear young lady! how wonderful, how altogether unexpectedly splendid. (_CAIN emerges with the third brother, SIR JASPER, who is a paler, thinner, more sinister and aristocratic ASTON._) CAIN. Nyum nyum nyum. . . . SIR JASPER. What a perfect sentence that was of yours, Aston: quite Henry Jamesian! "My dear young lady"--as though you were forty years her senior; and the rare old-worldliness of that "altogether unexpectedly splendid"! Admirable. I don't remember your ever employing quite exactly this opening gambit before: but of course there were things very like it. (_To CAIN._) What a nasty spectacle you are, Cain, gnashing your teeth like that! CAIN. Nyum nyum nyum. (_ASTON and TOPSY are enthusiastically talking about books: the two brothers, finding themselves quite unnoticed, retire into the shade of their twangum tree. BELLE GARRICK has been hovering behind TOPSY for some time past. She is more obviously pretty than her sister, full-bosomed and with a loose, red, laughing mouth. Unable to attract TOPSY'S attention, she turns round and calls, "HENRIKA." A pale face with wide, surprised eyes peeps round the trunk, hairy like a mammoth's leg, of a kadapoo tree with magenta leaves and flame-coloured blossoms. This is HENRIKA, TOPSY'S youngest sister. She is dressed in a little white muslin frock set off with blue ribbons._) HENRIKA. (_Tiptoes forward._) Here I am; what is it? I was rather frightened of that man. But he really seems quite nice and tame, doesn't he? BELLE. Of course he is! What a goose you are to hide like that! HENRIKA. He seems a nice, quiet, gentle man; and _so_ clever. BELLE. What good hands he has, hasn't he? (_Approaching TOPSY and whispering in her ear._) Your hair's going into your eyes, my dear. Toss it back in that pretty way you have. (_TOPSY tosses her head; the soft, golden bell of hair quivers elastically about her ears._) That's right! CAIN. (_Bounding into the air and landing with feet apart, knees bent, and a hand on either knee._) Oh, nyum nyum! ASTON. Oh, the beauty of that movement! It simply makes one catch one's breath with surprised pleasure, as the gesture of a perfect dancer might. SIR JASPER. Beautiful, wasn't it?--a pleasure purely æsthetic and æsthetically pure. Listen to Cain. ASTON. (_To TOPSY._) And do you ever try writing yourself? I'm sure you ought to. SIR JASPER. Yes, yes, we're sure you ought to. Eh, Cain? TOPSY. Well, I have written a little poetry--or rather a few bad verses--at one time or another. ASTON. Really now! What about, may I ask? TOPSY. Well . . . (_hesitating_) about different things, you know. (_She fans herself rather nervously._) BELLE. (_Leaning over TOPSY'S shoulder and addressing ASTON directly._) Mostly about Love. (_She dwells long and voluptuously on the last word, pronouncing it "lovv" rather than "luvv."_) CAIN. Oh, dat's good, dat's good; dat's dam good. (_In moments of emotion CAIN'S manners and language savour more obviously than usual of the Old Plantation._) Did yoh see her face den? BELLE. (_Repeats, slowly and solemnly._) Mostly about Love. HENRIKA. Oh, oh. (_She covers her face with her hands._) How could you? It makes me tingle all over. (_She runs behind the kadapoo tree again._) ASTON. (_Very seriously and intelligently._) Really. That's very interesting. I wish you'd let me see what you've done some time. SIR JASPER. We always like to see these things, don't we, Aston? Do you remember Mrs. Towler? How pretty she was! And the way we criticized her literary productions. . . . ASTON. Mrs. Towler. . . . (_He shudders as though he had touched something soft and filthy._) Oh, don't, Jasper, don't! SIR JASPER. Dear Mrs. Towler! We were very nice about her poems, weren't we? Do you remember the one that began: "My Love is like a silvern flower-de-luce Within some wondrous dream-garden pent: God made my lovely lily not for use, But for an ornament." Even Cain, I believe, saw the joke of that. ASTON. Mrs. Towler--oh, my God! But this is quite different: this girl really interests me. SIR JASPER. Oh yes, I know, I know. She interests you too, Cain, doesn't she? CAIN. (_Prances two or three steps of a cake-walk and sings._) Oh, ma honey, oh, ma honey. ASTON. But, I tell you, this is quite different. SIR JASPER. Of course it is. Any fool could see that it was. I've admitted it already. ASTON. (_To TOPSY._) You will show them me, won't you? I should so much like to see them. TOPSY. (_Covered with confusion._) No, I really couldn't. You're a professional, you see. HENRIKA. (_From behind the kadapoo tree._) No, you mustn't show them to him. They're really mine, you know, a great many of them. BELLE. Nonsense! (_She stoops down and moves TOPSY'S foot in such a way that a very well-shaped, white-stockinged leg is visible some way up the calf. Then, to TOPSY._) Pull your skirt down, my dear. You're quite indecent. CAIN. (_Putting up his monocle._) Oh, nyum nyum, ma honey! Come wid me to Dixie Land. . . . SIR JASPER. H'm, a little conscious, don't you think? ASTON. But even professionals are human, my dear young lady. And perhaps I might be able to give you some help with your writings. TOPSY. That's awfully kind of you, Mr. Tyrrell. HENRIKA. Oh, don't let him see them. I don't want him to. Don't let him. ASTON. (_With heavy charm._) It always interests me so much when I hear of the young--and I trust you won't be offended if I include you in their number--when I hear of the young taking to writing. It is one of the most important duties that we of the older generation can perform--to help and encourage the young with their work. It's a great service to the cause of Art. SIR JASPER. That was what I was always saying to Mrs. Towler, if I remember rightly. TOPSY. I can't tell you, Mr. Tyrrell, how delightful it is to have one's work taken seriously. I am so grateful to you. May I send you my little efforts, then? CAIN. (_Executes a step dance to the furious clicking of a pair of bones._) SIR JASPER. I congratulate you, Aston. A most masterful bit of strategy. BELLE. I wonder what he'll do next. Isn't it exciting? Topsy, toss your head again. That's right. Oh, I wish something would happen! HENRIKA. What have you done? Oh, Topsy, you really mustn't send him my poems. BELLE. You said he was such a nice man just now. HENRIKA. Oh yes, he's nice, I know. But then he's a man, you must admit that. I don't want him to see them. TOPSY. (_Firmly._) You're being merely foolish, Henrika. Mr. Tyrrell, a very distinguished literary man, has been kind enough to take an interest in my work. His criticism will be the greatest help to me. BELLE. Of course it will, and he has such charming eyes. (_A pause. The music, which has, all this while, been faintly heard through the ball-room door, becomes more audible. They are playing a rich, creamy waltz._) What delicious music! Henrika, come and have a dance. (_She seizes HENRIKA round the waist and begins to waltz. HENRIKA is reluctant at first, but little by little the rhythm of the dance takes