Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 174
Hope goes up to the old man and puts her two hands in his and says, oh so sweetly, “I will indeed, sir, for Ned’s sake.”
But her mother has risen, shrinking, from her place.
“Ellwood,” she says, “Lawyer Ellwood.”
All the audience look at the old man. A fox certainly — oh, a sly old fox — just that look of mean cunning that stamped every rural lawyer in every melodrama for thirty years. But Hope sees nothing of it.
“No, Ned, you mustn’t put to sea to-night. It’s too wild a night. Hear how the rain is driving at the windows. You must stay here and your father, too. Mother, this is Ned, my husband, and this is his father, and these are our friends, Ned, and father’s only gone to the light. He’ll be back in just a minute—”
And at that moment the door swings open and Hiram Haycroft — shaking the wet from his black oilskins — strides back into the room. Hope comes to him pleadingly.
“Father, Father dear, this is my husband—”
But he doesn’t see her. He is staring at Ellwood.
“You!” he shouts. “You that have sought to bring ruin upon me and mine!”
Ellwood comes towards him, raising a protesting hand.
“Hiram!” he says.
“Out of my house!” shouts Haycroft. “Your accursed money is not due till to-morrow and to-morrow it shall be paid. Out! before I lay hands on you.” He steps forward menacingly, his hand uplifted. Ned Ellwood steps in his way.
“Put down your hands,” he says, “and listen to me.”
Hiram refuses to listen. He reaches for the gun that hangs above the mantel. The affrighted guests crowd around him. There is noise and confusion, above which is Haycroft’s voice, calling, “Out of my house! I say.”
The father and son move to the door, but as they go Hope rushes to her husband.
“Father! he is my husband! Where he goes I go. Ned, take me with you, out into the night and the storm.” (At these words the wind which has been quite quiet breaks out again.) “Out into the world, for better or for worse. Where you go I follow, my place is at your side!”
There is a burst of applause from the audience at this sentiment. That was the kind of girl they raised in 1880. There are none left now.
And so with her father’s imprecations ringing in her ears Hope casts a little grey cloak over her head and shoulders and with arm clinging to her husband passes out into the storm.
The door closes after them.
There is a hush and silence.
Not even Rube and Phœbe can break it now. The farm guests, almost inarticulate, come and say good-night and pass out. Martha, lamp in hand, goes tearfully up the stairs. Rube and Phœbe fade away.
Hiram Haycroft sits alone. The lights are dimmed down. There is a flicker of light from the fire in the stove but little more. At times the rattle of the storm at the window makes him lift his head. Once he walks to the window and stands and gazes out into the darkness towards the sea.
And once he goes over to the dresser at the side of the room and takes from it the wallet that has in it his two thousand dollars, holds it a moment in his hand and then replaces it.
At intervals the storm is heard outside. The audience by instinct know that the act is not over. There is more tragedy to come.
The farmer rises slowly from his chair. He lays aside his oilskins. Then, still slowly, he takes off his boots, — with a boot jack — a stage effect much valued in melodrama.
He moves about the room, a candle in his hand, bolts and chains the door, and so, step by step slowly and with much creaking, ascends the stairs to bed.
The audience follow in a breathless stillness. They know that something is going to happen.
Deep silence and waiting. You can hear the audience breathing. No one speaks.
Then a side door in the room is opened, slowly, cautiously. You can see a dark figure stealing across the stage — nearer and nearer to the drawer where the wallet of money is lying. Look! What is he doing? Is he taking it, or is he moving it? Is it a thief or what?
Then suddenly the farmer’s voice from above.
“Who’s that down there?”
You can half see the farmer as he stands on the upper landing, a candle in his hand.
“Who’s that, I say?” he calls again.
The crouching figure crawls away, making for the door.
What happens after that follows with a rush. The farmer comes hurrying down the stairs, tears open the drawer and with a loud cry of “Thief! A thief!” rouses the sleeping house. You hear the people moving above. You see the lights on the stairs as the crouching figure rushes for the door. The farmer has seized his shotgun. There is a cry of “Stand there, or I’ll shoot,” then the flash of fire and the roar of the gun and the crouching figure falls to the floor, the farmer shouting, “Lights here. Bring a light! A thief!”
It is Rube who enters first, the others crowding after. It is Rube who lifts the fallen body, Rube who holds the light on the pale face so that the audience may see who it is — but something has long since told them that. It is Rube who pulls aside the white wig and the white beard that had disguised the youthful features. There is a loud cry from the farmer’s wife as she sinks down beside the body.
“Jack, Jack, it’s my boy come back to me.”
And the farmer, the gun still clenched and smoking in his hand cries:
“My son! I have killed my son.”
And with that down sinks the sombre curtain on a silent audience.
That’s the way, you see that the drama was put over in 1880. We weren’t afraid of real effects, — terror, agony, murder — anything and the more of it the better. In a modern drawing-room play the characters get no nearer to murder than to have Pup No. 1 dressed in grey tweeds, discuss the theory of homicide with Pup No. 2, dressed in a brown golf costume. That’s all the excitement there is. But in this good old farm melodrama they weren’t afraid of mixing the thing up.
So the farmer is ruined, he’s driven his daughter from the door and has shot his son — and there you are.
When the play reaches this point, at the end of Act Two, there is nothing for it but a two years’ wait. So the play bill at this point bears the legend Two Years Elapse between Acts Two and Three. The audience are glad of it. Without that they couldn’t have stood the tragedy of it. But as it is there are two years; the men rise and file out up the aisle; very slowly — there was no need to hurry with two years ahead of them.
The gas is turned up now and the audience are gradually recovering; a boy comes down the aisle and shouts “Peanuts!” That helps a lot. And presently when the orchestra begins to play My Mother Said That I Never Should they begin to get reconciled to life again. Anyway, being used to this type of play they know that things aren’t so bad as they seem. Jack can’t really be dead. He’ll be brought to life somehow. He was shot, but he can’t have been killed. Every audience knows its own line of play; in fact in all the drama the audience has to be taken for granted or the play wouldn’t be intelligible. Anybody who has seen a moving picture audience snap up the symbols and legends and conventions of a photoplay and get the required meaning out of it will know just what I mean. So it was in 1880. The audience got cheered up because they realized that Jack couldn’t really be dead.
So they look at their programs with a revived interest to see what happens next.
Here it is:
ACT III — Two Years Later. The Fore Shore After Sunset. A Gathering Storm.
Ah! Look at the scene as the curtain goes up now. Isn’t it grand! The rocks and the breaking water and the white foam in the twilight! How ever do they do it? And the lighthouse there at the right hand side, how it towers into the dark sky! Look at the fishermen all in black oilskins and sou’westers, glistening in the wet, moving about on the shore and pointing to the sea.
Notice that short flash of yellow lightning and the rumble of thunder away behind the scene. And look at the long beams of the light from the lighthouse far out on the water.
Don’t talk to me of a problem play, played in a modern drawing room as between a man in tweed and a woman in sequins. When I attend the theatre let there be a lighthouse and a gathering of huddled fisherman and danger lowering over the sea. As drama it is worth all the sex stuff that was ever slopped over the footlights.
“A wild night!”
It’s a fisherman speaking — or no, it’s Rube, only you would hardly know him — all in oilskins. In the New England play all the farmers turn into fishermen as the plot thickens. So it is Zeke, as another fisherman, who answers:
“It’s all that! God help all poor souls out at sea to-night.”
The lightning and thunder make good again, the fishermen and the women on the shore move to and fro, talking, and excited, and pointing at the sea. Rube and Zeke come together in the foreground, talking. Their function is to let the audience know all that has happened in two years.
“A wild night,” Zeke repeats, “such a night as it was two years ago, you mind, the night that Mr. Jack was shot.”
They both shake their heads. “ ’Twould have been a sight better,” says Rube, “if the farmer’s bullet had killed him that night. A sad sight it is to see him as he is, witless and speechless. It’s cruel hard on them all. Is he here to-night?”
“Ay, he’s here to-night — he’s always here on the shore when a storm is on. Look, see him there, always looking to the sea!”
The audience look at once and see in the little group standing in the gathering storm, Jack — holding to his mother hard and looking out to sea.
“She’s leading him away. She’ll be wanting him to go home. . . .”
So Jack isn’t dead! But what is that queer, strange look on his face? Something blank, unhuman, witless. His mother leads him down the stage.
“Jack, come home, Jack. It’s no place for you here in the storm.”
The thunder and lightning break in again sharp and vivid and the wind roars behind the scenes.
Jack turns a vacant countenance upon his mother. His face is pale and thin. His eyes are bright.
The audience get it. Since he was shot down he has been there two years speechless and demented.
His mother keeps begging him to come home. He tries to drag her towards the sea. Demented as he is, there is a wild and growing excitement in his manner. He is pointing at the waves, gesticulating.
“What does he see?” Rube is asking. “What is it? He has a sailor’s eyes. What does he see out there?”
And at that minute there comes a shout from the clustered fishermen on the Fore Shore.
“A ship! A ship! There’s a vessel out on the reef. See! look!”
They run up and down, pointing and shouting. And far out on the waves lit for a moment by a flash of lightning, the audience sees a dismasted schooner — she’s made of cardboard — out beside the breakers on the reef.
At this moment the freckled boy, all in oilskins, rushes breathless on to the stage. He hasn’t grown an inch in two years but nobody cares about that.
“Mother, Rube,” he gasps. “I’ve been down to the Long Point — I ran all the way — there is a schooner going on the reef. Look, you can see, and Mother, Mother—”
The boy is almost frenzied into excitement. The crowd gathers about him.
“Mother it’s the Good Hope, her ship!”
“The Good Hope?” exclaims everybody.
The boy gasps on.
“They were lowering the boats — I could see them — but nothing can live in that sea — one boat went down — I saw it — and I could see her, Hope, standing by the mast. I could see her face when the lightning came. Then I ran here. We must go out; we must get the life boats; we’ve got to go. You men, who’ll come?”
Come! they’ll all come! Listen to the shout of them. See! they are dragging forth the life boat from its wooden house on the left of the stage. There are swinging lanterns and loud calls and the roaring of the wind. The stage is darkening and the lightning glares on the sea. But even as they are trying to launch the life boat, there’s a new cry —
“Look — a boat! a boat! out there on the reef, right among the breakers.”
The fishermen rush up and down in great excitement. “There’s a woman in the boat! God help her! She’s lost!”
“Mother, Mother, it’s Hope! See she’s alone in the boat, she’s kneeling up; she’s praying.”
There are new cries:
“Man the life boat! Man the life boat!”
The great boat is dragged out and ready. The men are climbing in over the side.
Then a fisherman shouts out and is heard, clear and single, for a moment in the lull of the storm.
“There’s only one man can pilot this boat across that reef, only Hiram Haycroft.”
There are cries of “Hiram! Hiram!” They point out at the lighthouse from which the long beams still revolve on the water. “He can’t leave the light.”
Noise and commotion.
“He must leave the light.”
“It’s life or death on this one chance. Lads, stand ready there with the life boat and come some of you with me and bring him down.” They rush towards the lighthouse. There is noise and thunder; a flash of light shows the boat, clearly in sight now, right out among the breakers and Hope seen for a moment kneeling in the bow praying, her face illuminated in the lightning. Then in a swirl of white water, the boat vanishes in the foam of the reef.
ACT IV
Then the scene changes — all done in a minute — from the shore to the Lighthouse Tower. It was what used to be called a “transformation scene.” It involved an eclipse of darkness punctured by little gas jets, and a terrible thumping and bumping with an undertone of curses. You could hear a voice in the darkness say quite distinctly, “Get that blank blank drop over there,” and you could see black figures running round in the transformation. Then there came an awful crash and a vision of a back curtain sliding down amongst the dark men. The lights flicked up again and all the audience broke into applause at the final wonder of it.
Look! It’s the lighthouse tower with the big lights burning and the storm howling outside. How bright and clear it is here inside the tower with its great windows looking out over the storm sixty feet above the sea.
He stands beside the lights, trimming the lamps, calm and steady at his task. The storm is all about him, but inside the lighthouse tower all is bright and still.
Hiram peers a moment from the lighthouse window. He opens the little door and steps out on the iron platform high above the sea. The wind roars about him and the crest of the driven water leaps to his very feet. He comes in, closing the door quietly and firmly behind him and turns again to his light.
“God help all poor souls at sea to-night,” he says.
And then with a rush and clatter of feet they burst in upon him, the group of fishermen, Martha, and his demented son, crowding into the lighthouse tower and standing on the stairs. Jack is at the rear of all, but there is a strange look on his face, a light of new intelligence.
“Quick, Hiram, you must come. There’s been a wreck. Look, there’s a boat going on the reef. The men are ready in the life boat, you must steer her through. It’s life or death There’s not a moment to lose.”
Hiram looks for a moment at the excited crowd and then turns quietly to his task.
“My place is here,” he says.
There is a moment’s hush. Martha rushes to him and clutches him by the coat.
“Hiram, they haven’t told you. The schooner that was wrecked to-night is the Good Hope.”
Hiram staggers back against the wall.
“And the boat that’s drifting on the reef, it’s Hope, it’s our daughter.”
Hiram stands grasping the rail along the wall. He speaks panting with agitation, but firm:
“Martha — I’m sworn to tend the light. If the light fails God knows what it means to the ships at sea. If my child is lost it is God’s will — but — my place is here.”
And he turns back to the light.
The fishermen who have been crowding close to the window cry:
“Look down below. The boat — she’s driving in here right on the rocks — the woman’s still clinging to her.”
Martha rushes to the window and calls, “My child, save my child! save her!” And at exactly this minute Jack steps out into the centre of the floor. His face is clear and plain beneath the light. There is no dementia left in it now.
“Father,” he says, “Mother.”
They all turn to look at him. But no one speaks.
“The rope,” he says, “give me the rope.”
He points to a long coil of rope that hangs against the wall. With a sailor’s quickness of hand he takes the rope and runs a bowline knot in the end of it. In a moment, with the end of the line about his body, he throws open the door and rushes on the iron platform. “Hold fast to the line,” he calls, and then the audience see him mount the iron rail, pause a moment, and then dive head first into the sea beneath.
There is shouting and clamor from the fishermen.
“There he is! Look, he’s swimming to her! Hold fast there! . . . He’s got her. . . . Now then, in with the line.”
And with one glorious haul, up comes the line from the roaring sea with Jack at the end of it, and, tight held in his encircling arms, the fainting form of Hope his sister.
Couldn’t be done? Nonsense! That was nothing to what we used to see done in the oldtime plays. If need be, Jack could have fished out a whole shipload.
There is a cry of “Saved, saved!” and Hiram Haycroft clasping the senseless form of his daughter to his heart, cries:
“My little gal! Cast up by the sea!”
And the curtain comes down in a roar of applause.
Act V — Six Months Later. Scene. The Kitchen of the Haycroft Farm.
This last act in the melodrama is all to the good. There is no more tragedy, no strain, no trouble. The play is really over but this part is always put in as a sort of wind-up to make everybody happy. The audience are now sitting in a swim of luxurious sentimentality. How fine everything has turned out — Jack has got his mind back, and Hope is saved and her husband, too, and the old farm isn’t mortgaged or sold and the Haycroft’s are not ruined after all. Yes, and more than that; there are all kinds of little items of happiness to be thrown in.
