If; a play in four acts

Front matter

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Foreword

To praise a new play of Dunsany's is, to my mind, like commending a sunset as a satisfactory event, or expressing a favorable opinion of the beauty of flowers. Which emphasizes the remarkable fact that this author has no lukewarm admirers, or temperate cavilers. Readers of both his prose and plays divide themselves into antithetical groups: those who read with cool, abstract, analjdiical consciousness, and those who so lose themselves in "eternal and ancient lands" that they forget language, style, the author himself, and only when the tale is past, the play ended, do they become again aware of the world and its lesser affairs, remember and appreciate the conceiver of these words and phrases, and become conscious of some faint protest from the wholly confused, self-controlled critics who, like Miss Cubbidge's school-friend feel that "it is not Proper for you to be there."

Hence any foreword such as this can be only a very personal thing. If I were as frank vii

FOREWORD

as critics are supposed to be, or brief as bookreviewers ought to, or direct as a head-liner, I might sum it all up in a single sentence : I am tremendously fond of Dunsany and his work, and I am sorry for you if you're not !

The law of compensation is ever operative and those who find no thrill, no emotion of utter delight in these tales and plays, must surely draw from some other source of life's pleasure, real surfeit, of which we, his devotees, are ignorant. I have read "The Exiles' Club" probably forty times, in crowded hotel lobbies, in green and steamy jungles, in an upper berth swinging through an arc of ninety degrees, and I look forward to the forty-first reading with the certain knowledge of complete absorption. I know that the four words "I am the last" in "Charon," and the other four, "It was new then" in "The Song of the Blackbird" will seem as fresh at the next as at the first reading. There is very probably some definite reason for such unreasoning obsession as this, but I can neither name nor phrase it. Whether Dunsany pictures little god Jabim sorrowing on a kitchen midden, or pirates sailing in a wheeled brig through the Sahara, or the men of Daleswood scrawling their love of home in a viii

FOREWORD

doomed front-line trench, he compels my complete surrender of consciousness to his theme. And when such is the case, specific criticism is impossible.

Humanity overwhelmingly prefers photography to painting — the negative of a battlefield to Toten Insel, O. Henry to Maeterlinck, Conrad to Blackwood, Stevenson to Stephens. My own life, as a scientist, I find is a neverending attempt to turn painting into photography — ^fairy tales into drab reality — to interpret in terms of physics, chemistry, interaction, or some sort of understandable truth, such miracles as the change from caterpillar to butterfly, the assumption of cock's plumage by a hen pheasant. While the enthusiasm of the study of bird and beast, of feeble inquiry into the evolution of life, while the joy of all this is beyond words, yet the ultimate solution, the resolving of the miracle, automatically denudes the problem of its greatest attraction, and we throw it aside and turn to the next. Two and two must surely hold more of unconscious fascination for a child, than the eternal certainty of their known sum ; some of the thrill in the mysterious hieroglyphics of a gorgeous black and gold Chinese sign is lost when it is interpreted ix

FOREWORD

as advertising an imported hair oil. And so perhaps my sheer, uncritical joy in a play such as the "If" of the present volume, is due to the relief of leavening the dull main street of life with flowers of Carcassonne, or as in this case, with the crystal of Ali ; a relief from the eternal straight line or triangle drama, which can develop or end only happily or unhappily, to a play which begins in a spirit of comedy, develops mysteriously, and ends satisfactorily.

William Beebe.

New York,

December lo, 1921.

IF

DRAMATIS PERSONS

Mary Beal

Liza

Ali

Bill j

ry [ two railway porters

The Man in the Corner

MiRALDA Clement

Hafiz el Alcolahn

Ben Hussein, Lord of the Pass Zabnool ]

ShabeeshI^''^'"^"''^''^ Omar, a singer Zagboola, mother of Hafiz The Sheik of the Bishareens

IF

Scene i

A small railway station near London. Time: Ten years ago.

Bert 'Ow goes it, Bill?

Bill Goes it ? 'Ow d'yer think it goes ?

Bert

I don't know, Bill. 'Ow is it?

Bill Bloody.

Bert Why? What's wrong?

Bill Wrong? Nothing ain't wrong.

Bert What's up then?

IF

Bill

Nothing ain't right.

Bert Why, wot's the worry?

Bill

Wot's the worry? They don't give you better wages nor a dog, and then they thinks they can talk at yer and talk at yer, and say wot they likes, like.

Bert Why? You been on the carpet, Bill?

Bill Ain't I ! Proper.

Bert Why, wot about, Bill?

Bill

Wot about? I'll tell yer. Just coz I let a lidy get into a train. That's wot about. Said I ought to 'av stopped 'er. Thought the train was moving. Thought it was dangerous. Thought I tried to murder 'er, I suppose.

Bert

Wot? The other day?

Bill

Yes.

IF

Bert Tuesday?

Bill Yes.

Bert Why. The one that dropped her bag?

Bill

Yes. Drops 'er bag. Writes to the company. They writes back she shouldn't 'av got in. She writes back she should. Then they gets on to me. Any more of it and I'll . . .

Bert I wouldn't, Bill; don't you.

Bill I will.

Bert

Don't you, Bill. You've got your family to consider.

Bill

Well, anyway, I won't let any more of them passengers go jumping into trains any more, not when they're moving, I won't. When the train gets in, doors shut. That's the rule. And they'll 'ave to abide by it.

IF

Bert Well, I wouldn't stop one, not if . . •

Bill I don't care. They ain't going to 'ave me on the mat again and talk all that sttiflf to me. No, if someone 'as to stiffer . . . 'Ere she is. . . .

[Noise of approaching train heard.]

Bert Ay, that's her.

Bill

And shut goes the door. [Enter John Beal.]

Bert Wait a moment. Bill.

Bill

Not if he's . . . Not if he was ever so.

John [preparing to pass\ Good morning. . . .

Bill Can't come through. Too late. 6

IF

John Too late? Why, the train's only just in.

Bill Don't care. It's the rule.

John O, nonsense. [He carries on.]

Bill It's too late. I tell you you can't come.

John

But that's abstird. I want to catch my train.

Bill

It's too late.

Bert Let him go, Bill.

Bill I'm blowed if I let him go.

John

I want to catch my train.

[John is stopped by Bill and pushed back by the face. John advances towards Bill looking like fighting. The train has gone.]

IF

Bill

Only doing my duty.

[John stops and reflects at this, deciding it isn't good enough. He shrugs his shoulders, turns round and goes away.]

John

I shouldn't be surprised if I didn't get even with you one of these days, you . . . and some way you won't expect.

Scene 2 Yesterday evening

[Curtain rises on John and Mary in their suburban home.]

John

I say, dear. Don't you think we ought to plant an acacia?

Mary An acacia, what's that, John?

John O, it's one of those trees that they have.

Mary But why, John?

IF

John

Well, you see the house is called The Acacias, and it seems rather silly not to have at least one.

Mary

O, I don't think that matters. Lots of places are called lots of things. Everyone does.

John

Yes, but it might help the postman.

Mary

O, no, it wouldn't, dear. He wouldn't know an acacia if he saw it any more than I should.

John

Quite right, Mary, you're always right. What a clever head you've got !

Mary

Have I, John? We'll plant an acacia if you like. I'll ask about it at the grocer's.

John

You can't get one there.

Mary

No, but he's sure to know where it can be got.

IF

John Where do they grow, Mary?

Mary I don't know, John; but I am sure they do, somewhere.

John

Somehow I wish sometimes, I ahnost wish I could have gone abroad for a week or so to places like where acacias grow naturally.

Mary

O, would you really, John?

John

No, not really. But I just think of it sometimes.

Mary

Where would you have gone?

John

O, I don't know. The East or some such place. I've often heard people speak of it, and somehow it seemed so . . .

Mary

The East, John? Not the East. I don't think the East somehow is quite respectable.

John

O well, it's all right, I never went, and never shall go now. It doesn't matter.

lO tF

Mary [the photographs catching her eye]

O, John, I meant to tell you. Such a dreadful thing happened.

John What, Mary?

Mary

Well, Liza was dusting the photographs, and when she came to Jane's she says she hadn't really begun to dust it, only looked at it, and it fell down, and that bit of glass is broken right out of it.

John

Ask her not to look at it so hard another time.

Mary O, what do you mean, John?

John

Well, that's how she broke it; she said so, and as I know you believe in Liza . . .

Mary Well, I can't think she'd tell a Ke, John.

John

No, of course not. But she mustn't look so hard another time.