The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950

We only ask to be reassured

  About the noises in the cellar

  And the window that should not have been open.

  Why do we all behave as if the door might suddenly open, the curtains be drawn,

  The cellar make some dreadful disclosure, the roof disappear,

  And we should cease to be sure of what is real or unreal?

  Hold tight, hold tight, we must insist that the world is what we have always taken it to be.

  AMY’S VOICE. Ivy! Violet! has Arthur or John come yet?

  IVY. There is no news of Arthur or John.

  [Enter AMY and AGATHA]

  AMY. It is very annoying. They both promised to be here

  In good time for dinner. It is very annoying.

  Now they can hardly arrive in time to dress.

  I do not understand what could have gone wrong

  With both of them, coming from different directions.

  Well, we must go and dress, I suppose. I hope Harry will feel better

  After his rest upstairs.

  [Exeunt, except AGATHA]

  Scene II

  AGATHA

  [Enter MARY with flowers]

  MARY. The spring is very late in this northern country‚

  Late and uncertain, clings to the south wall.

  The gardener had no garden-flowers to give me for this evening.

  AGATHA. I always forget how late the spring is, here.

  MARY. I had rather wait for our windblown blossoms,

  Such as they are, than have these greenhouse flowers

  Which do not belong here, which do not know

  The wind and rain, as I know them.

  AGATHA. I wonder how many we shall be for dinner.

  MARY. Seven … nine … ten surely.

  I hear that Harry has arrived already

  And he was the only one that was uncertain.

  Arthur or John may be late, of course.

  We may have to keep the dinner back …

  AGATHA. And also Dr. Warburton. At least, Amy has invited him.

  MARY. Dr. Warburton? I think she might have told me;

  It is very difficult, having to plan

  For uncertain numbers. Why did she ask him?

  AGATHA. She only thought of asking him a little while ago.

  MARY. Well, there’s something to be said for having an outsider;

  For what is more formal than a family dinner?

  An official occasion of uncomfortable people

  Who meet very seldom, making conversation.

  I am very glad if Dr. Warburton is coming.

  I shall have to sit between Arthur and John.

  Which is worse, thinking of what to say to John,

  Or having to listen to Arthur’s chatter

  When he thinks he is behaving like a man of the world?

  Cousin Agatha, I want your advice.

  AGATHA. I should have thought

  You had more than you wanted of that, when at college.

  MARY. I might have known you’d throw that up against me.

  I know I wasn’t one of your favourite students:

  I only saw you as a hard headmistress

  Who knew the way of dominating timid girls.

  I don’t see you any differently now;

  But I really wish that I’d taken your advice

  And tried for a fellowship, seven years ago.

  Now I want your advice, because there’s no one else to ask,

  And because you are strong, and because you don’t belong here

  Any more than I do. I want to get away.

  AGATHA. After seven years?

  MARY. Oh, you don’t understand!

  But you do understand. You only want to know

  Whether I understand. You know perfectly well,

  What Cousin Amy wants, she usually gets.

  Why do you so seldom come here? You’re not afraid of her,

  But I think you must have wanted to avoid collision.

  I suppose I could have gone, if I’d had the moral courage,

  Even against a will like hers. I know very well

  Why she wanted to keep me. She didn’t need me:

  She would have done just as well with a hired servant

  Or with none. She only wanted me for Harry —

  Not such a compliment: she only wanted

  To have a tame daughter-in-law with very little money,

  A housekeeper-companion for her and Harry.

  Even when he married, she still held on to me

  Because she couldn’t bear to let any project go;

  And even when she died: I believed that Cousin Amy —

  I almost believed it — had killed her by willing.

  Doesn’t that sound awful? I know that it does.

  Did you ever meet her? What was she like?

  AGATHA. I am the only one who ever met her,

  The only one Harry asked to his wedding:

  Amy did not know that. I was sorry for her;

  I could see that she distrusted me — she was frightened of the family,

  She wanted to fight them — with the weapons of the weak,

  Which are too violent. And it could not have been easy,

  Living with Harry. It’s not what she did to Harry,

  That’s important, I think, but what he did to himself.

  MARY. But it wasn’t till I knew that Harry had returned

  That I felt the strength to go. I know I must go.

  But where? I want a job: and you can help me.

  AGATHA. I am very sorry, Mary, I am very sorry for you;

  Though you may not think me capable of such a feeling.

  I would like to help you: but you must not run away.

  Any time before now, it would have shown courage

  And would have been right. Now, the courage is only the moment

  And the moment is only fear and pride. I see more than this,

  More than I can tell you, more than there are words for.

  At this moment, there is no decision to be made;

  The decision will be made by powers beyond us

  Which now and then emerge. You and I, Mary,

  Are only watchers and waiters: not the easiest rôle.

  I must go and change for dinner.

  [Exit]

  MARY. So you will not help me!

  Waiting, waiting, always waiting.

  I think this house means to keep us waiting.

  [Enter HARRY]

  HARRY. Waiting? For what?

  MARY. How do you do, Harry.

  You are down very early. I thought you had just arrived.

  Did you have a comfortable journey?

  HARRY. Not very.

  But, at least, it did not last long. How are you, Mary?

  MARY. Oh, very well. What are you looking for?

  HARRY. I had only just noticed that this room is quite unchanged:

  The same hangings … the same pictures … even the table,

  The chairs, the sofa … all in the same positions.

  I was looking to see if anything was changed,

  But if so, I can’t find it.

  MARY. Your mother insisted

  On everything being kept the same as when you left it.

  HARRY. I wish she had not done that. It’s very unnatural,

  This arresting of the normal change of things:

  But it’s very like her. What I might have expected.

  It only makes the changing of people

  All the more manifest.

  MARY. Yes, nothing changes here,

  And we just go on … drying up, I suppose,

  Not noticing the change. But to you, I am sure,

  We must seem very altered.

  HARRY. You have hardly changed at all —

  And I haven’t seen you since you came down from Oxford.

  MARY. Well, I must go and change for dinner.

  We do change — to that extent.

  HARRY. No, don
’t go just yet.

  MARY. Are you glad to be at home?

  HARRY. There was something

  I wanted to ask you. I don’t know yet.

  All these years I’d been longing to get back

  Because I thought I never should. I thought it was a place

  Where life was substantial and simplified —

  But the simplification took place in my memory,

  I think. It seems I shall get rid of nothing.

  Of none of the shadows that I wanted to escape;

  And at the same time, other memories,

  Earlier, forgotten, begin to return

  Out of my childhood. I can’t explain.

  But I thought I might escape from one life to another,

  And it may be all one life, with no escape. Tell me,

  Were you ever happy here, as a child at Wishwood?

  MARY. Happy? not really, though I never knew why:

  It always seemed that it must be my own fault,

  And never to be happy was always to be naughty.

  But there were reasons: I was only a cousin

  Kept here because there was nothing else to do with me.

  I didn’t belong here. It was different for you.

  And you seemed so much older. We were rather in awe of you —

  At least, I was.

  HARRY. Why were we not happy?

  MARY. Well, it all seemed to be imposed upon us;

  Even the nice things were laid out ready,

  And the treats were always so carefully prepared;

  There was never any time to invent our own enjoyments.

  But perhaps it was all designed for you, not for us.

  HARRY. No, it didn’t seem like that. I was part of the design

  As well as you. But what was the design?

  It never came off. But do you remember

  MARY. The hollow tree in what we called the wilderness

  HARRY. Down near the river. That was the stockade

  From which we fought the Indians, Arthur and John.

  MARY. It was the cave where we met by moonlight

  To raise the evil spirits.

  HARRY. Arthur and John.

  Of course we were punished for being out at night

  After being put to bed. But at least they never knew

  Where we had been.

  MARY. They never found the secret.

  HARRY. Not then. But later, coming back from school

  For the holidays, after the formal reception

  And the family festivities, I made my escape

  As soon as I could, and slipped down to the river

  To find the old hiding place. The wilderness was gone,

  The tree had been felled, and a neat summer-house

  Had been erected, ‘to please the children’.

  It’s absurd that one’s only memory of freedom

  Should be a hollow tree in a wood by the river.

  MARY. But when I was a child I took everything for granted,

  Including the stupidity of older people —

  They lived in another world, which did not touch me.

  Just now, I find them very difficult to bear.

  They are always assured that you ought to be happy

  At the very moment when you are wholly conscious

  Of being a misfit, of being superfluous.

  But why should I talk about my commonplace troubles?

  They must seem very trivial indeed to you.

  It’s just ordinary hopelessness.

  HARRY. One thing you cannot know:

  The sudden extinction of every alternative,

  The unexpected crash of the iron cataract.

  You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it.

  You only know what it is not to hope:

  You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you,

  Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless

  Unrecognised by other men, though sometimes by each other.

  MARY. I know what you mean. That is an experience

  I have not had. Nevertheless, however real,

  However cruel, it may be a deception.

  HARRY. What I see

  May be one dream or another; if there is nothing else

  The most real is what I fear. The bright colour fades

  Together with the unrecapturable emotion,

  The glow upon the world, that never found its object;

  And the eye adjusts itself to a twilight

  Where the dead stone is seen to be batrachian,

  The aphyllous branch ophidian.

  MARY. You bring your own landscape

  No more real than the other. And in a way you contradict yourself:

  That sudden comprehension of the death of hope

  Of which you speak, I know you have experienced it,

  And I can well imagine how awful it must be.

  But in this world another hope keeps springing

  In an unexpected place, while we are unconscious of it.

  You hoped for something, in coming back to Wishwood,

  Or you would not have come.

  HARRY. Whatever I hoped for

  Now that I am here I know I shall not find it.

  The instinct to return to the point of departure

  And start again as if nothing had happened,

  Isn’t that all folly? It’s like the hollow tree,

  Not there.

  MARY. But surely, what you say

  Only proves that you expected Wishwood

  To be your real self, to do something for you

  That you can only do for yourself.

  What you need to alter is something inside you

  Which you can change anywhere — here, as well as elsewhere.

  HARRY. Something inside me, you think, that can be altered!

  And here, indeed! where I have felt them near me,

  Here and here and here — wherever I am not looking,

  Always flickering at the corner of my eye,

  Almost whispering just out of earshot —

  And inside too, in the nightly panic

  Of dreaming dissolution. You do not know,

  You cannot know, you cannot understand.

  MARY. I think I could understand, but you would have to be patient

  With me, and with people who have not had your experience.

  HARRY. If I tried to explain, you could never understand:

  Explaining would only make a worse misunderstanding;

  Explaining would only set me farther away from you.

  There is only one way for you to understand

  And that is by seeing. They are much too clever

  To admit you into our world. Yours is no better.

  They have seen to that: it is part of the torment.

  MARY. If you think I am incapable of understanding you —

  But in any case, I must get ready for dinner.

  HARRY. No, no, don’t go! Please don’t leave me

  Just at this moment. I feel it is important.

  Something should have come of this conversation.

  MARY. I am not a wise person,

  And in the ordinary sense I don’t know you very well,

  Although I remember you better than you think,

  And what is the real you. I haven’t much experience,

  But I see something now which doesn’t come from tutors

  Or from books, or from thinking, or from observation:

  Something which I did not know I knew.

  Even if, as you say, Wishwood is a cheat,

  Your family a delusion — then it’s all a delusion,

  Everything you feel — I don’t mean what you think,