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Title: The Devil's Disciple

Author: George Bernard Shaw

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THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE

Bernard Shaw




ACT I

At the most wretched hour between a black night and a wintry
morning in the year 1777, Mrs. Dudgeon, of New Hampshire, is
sitting up in the kitchen and general dwelling room of her farm
house on the outskirts of the town of Websterbridge. She is not a
prepossessing woman. No woman looks her best after sitting up all
night; and Mrs. Dudgeon's face, even at its best, is grimly
trenched by the channels into which the barren forms and
observances of a dead Puritanism can pen a bitter temper and a
fierce pride. She is an elderly matron who has worked hard
and got nothing by it except dominion and detestation in her
sordid home, and an unquestioned reputation for piety and
respectability among her neighbors, to whom drink and
debauchery are still so much more tempting than religion and
rectitude, that they conceive goodness simply as self-denial.
This conception is easily extended to others--denial, and finally
generalized as covering anything disagreeable. So Mrs. Dudgeon,
being exceedingly disagreeable, is held to be exceedingly good.
Short of flat felony, she enjoys complete license except for
amiable weaknesses of any sort, and is consequently, without
knowing it, the most licentious woman in the parish on the
strength of never having broken the seventh commandment or missed
a Sunday at the Presbyterian church.

The year 1777 is the one in which the passions roused of the
breaking off of the American colonies from England, more by their
own weight than their own will, boiled up to shooting point, the
shooting being idealized to the English mind as suppression of
rebellion and maintenance of British dominion, and to the
American as defence of liberty, resistance to tyranny, and
selfsacrifice on the altar of the Rights of Man. Into the merits
of these idealizations it is not here necessary to inquire:
suffice it to say, without prejudice, that they have convinced
both Americans and English that the most high minded course for
them to pursue is to kill as many of one another as possible, and
that military operations to that end are in full swing, morally
supported by confident requests from the clergy of both sides for
the blessing of God on their arms.

Under such circumstances many other women besides this
disagreeable Mrs. Dudgeon find themselves sitting up all night
waiting for news. Like her, too, they fall asleep towards
morning at the risk of nodding themselves into the kitchen fire.
Mrs. Dudgeon sleeps with a shawl over her head, and her feet on a
broad fender of iron laths, the step of the domestic altar of the
fireplace, with its huge hobs and boiler, and its hinged arm
above the smoky mantel-shelf for roasting. The plain kitchen
table is opposite the fire, at her elbow, with a candle on it in
a tin sconce. Her chair, like all the others in the room, is
uncushioned and unpainted; but as it has a round railed back and
a seat conventionally moulded to the sitter's curves, it is
comparatively a chair of state. The room has three doors, one on
the same side as the fireplace, near the corner, leading to the
best bedroom; one, at the opposite end of the opposite wall,
leading to the scullery and washhouse; and the house door, with
its latch, heavy lock, and clumsy wooden bar, in the front wall,
between the window in its middle and the corner next the bedroom
door. Between the door and the window a rack of pegs suggests to
the deductive observer that the men of the house are all away, as
there are no hats or coats on them. On the other side of the
window the clock hangs on a nail, with its white wooden dial,
black iron weights, and brass pendulum. Between the clock and the
corner, a big cupboard, locked, stands on a dwarf dresser full of
common crockery.

On the side opposite the fireplace, between the door and the
corner, a shamelessly ugly black horsehair sofa stands against
the wall. An inspection of its stridulous surface shows that
Mrs. Dudgeon is not alone. A girl of sixteen or seventeen has
fallen asleep on it. She is a wild, timid looking creature with
black hair and tanned skin. Her frock, a scanty garment, is rent,
weatherstained, berrystained, and by no means scrupulously clean.
It hangs on her with a freedom which, taken with her brown legs
and bare feet, suggests no great stock of underclothing.

Suddenly there comes a tapping at the door, not loud enough to
wake the sleepers. Then knocking, which disturbs Mrs. Dudgeon a
little. Finally the latch is tried, whereupon she springs up at
once.

MRS. DUDGEON (threateningly). Well, why don't you open the door?
(She sees that the girl is asleep and immediately raises a clamor
of heartfelt vexation.) Well, dear, dear me! Now this is--
(shaking her) wake up, wake up: do you hear?

THE GIRL (sitting up). What is it?

MRS. DUDGEON. Wake up; and be ashamed of yourself, you unfeeling
sinful girl, falling asleep like that, and your father hardly
cold in his grave.

THE GIRL (half asleep still). I didn't mean to. I dropped off--

MRS. DUDGEON (cutting her short). Oh yes, you've plenty of
excuses, I daresay. Dropped off! (Fiercely, as the knocking
recommences.) Why don't you get up and let your uncle in? after
me waiting up all night for him! (She pushes her rudely off the
sofa.) There: I'll open the door: much good you are to wait up.
Go and mend that fire a bit.

The girl, cowed and wretched, goes to the fire and puts a log on.
Mrs. Dudgeon unbars the door and opens it, letting into the
stuffy kitchen a little of the freshness and a great deal of the
chill of the dawn, also her second son Christy, a fattish,
stupid, fair-haired, round-faced man of about 22, muffled in a
plaid shawl and grey overcoat. He hurries, shivering, to the
fire, leaving Mrs. Dudgeon to shut the door.

CHRISTY (at the fire). F--f--f! but it is cold. (Seeing the girl,
and staring lumpishly at her.) Why, who are you?

THE GIRL (shyly). Essie.

MRS. DUDGEON. Oh you may well ask. (To Essie.) Go to your room,
child, and lie down since you haven't feeling enough to keep you
awake. Your history isn't fit for your own ears to hear.

ESSIE. I--

MRS. DUDGEON (peremptorily). Don't answer me, Miss; but show your
obedience by doing what I tell you. (Essie, almost in tears,
crosses the room to the door near the sofa.) And don't forget
your prayers. (Essie goes out.) She'd have gone to bed last night
just as if nothing had happened if I'd let her.

CHRISTY (phlegmatically). Well, she can't be expected to feel
Uncle Peter's death like one of the family.

MRS. DUDGEON. What are you talking about, child? Isn't she his
daughter--the punishment of his wickedness and shame? (She
assaults her chair by sitting down.)

CHRISTY (staring). Uncle Peter's daughter!

MRS. DUDGEON. Why else should she be here? D'ye think I've not
had enough trouble and care put upon me bringing up my own girls,
let alone you and your good-for-nothing brother, without having
your uncle's bastards--

CHRISTY (interrupting her with an apprehensive glance at the door
by which Essie went out). Sh! She may hear you.

MRS. DUDGEON (raising her voice). Let her hear me. People who
fear God don't fear to give the devil's work its right name.
(Christy, soullessly indifferent to the strife of Good and Evil,
stares at the fire, warming himself.) Well, how long are you
going to stare there like a stuck pig? What news have you for me?

CHRISTY (taking off his hat and shawl and going to the rack to
hang them up). The minister is to break the news to you. He'll be
here presently.

MRS. DUDGEON. Break what news?

CHRISTY (standing on tiptoe, from boyish habit, to hang his hat
up, though he is quite tall enough to reach the peg, and speaking
with callous placidity, considering the nature of the
announcement). Father's dead too.

MRS. DUDGEON (stupent). Your father!

CHRISTY (sulkily, coming back to the fire and warming himself
again, attending much more to the fire than to his mother). Well,
it's not my fault. When we got to Nevinstown we found him ill in
bed. He didn't know us at first. The minister sat up with him and
sent me away. He died in the night.

MRS. DUDGEON (bursting into dry angry tears). Well, I do think
this is hard on me--very hard on me. His brother, that was a
disgrace to us all his life, gets hanged on the public gallows as
a rebel; and your father, instead of staying at home where his
duty was, with his own family, goes after him and dies, leaving
everything on my shoulders. After sending this girl to me to take
care of, too! (She plucks her shawl vexedly over her ears.) It's
sinful, so it is; downright sinful.

CHRISTY (with a slow, bovine cheerfulness, after a pause). I
think it's going to be a fine morning, after all.

MRS. DUDGEON (railing at him). A fine morning! And your father
newly dead! Where's your feelings, child?

CHRISTY (obstinately). Well, I didn't mean any harm. I suppose a
man may make a remark about the weather even if his father's
dead.

MRS. DUDGEON (bitterly). A nice comfort my children are to me!
One son a fool, and the other a lost sinner that's left his home
to live with smugglers and gypsies and villains, the scum of the
earth!

Someone knocks.

CHRISTY (without moving). That's the minister.

MRS. DUDGEON (sharply). Well, aren't you going to let Mr.
Anderson in?

Christy goes sheepishly to the door. Mrs. Dudgeon buries her face
in her hands, as it is her duty as a widow to be overcome with
grief. Christy opens the door, and admits the minister,
Anthony Anderson, a shrewd, genial, ready Presbyterian divine
of about 50, with something of the authority of his profession in
his bearing. But it is an altogether secular authority, sweetened
by a conciliatory, sensible manner not at all suggestive of a
quite thoroughgoing other-worldliness. He is a strong, healthy
man, too, with a thick, sanguine neck; and his keen, cheerful
mouth cuts into somewhat fleshy corners. No doubt an excellent
parson, but still a man capable of making the most of this world,
and perhaps a little apologetically conscious of getting on
better with it than a sound Presbyterian ought.

ANDERSON (to Christy, at the door, looking at Mrs. Dudgeon whilst
he takes off his cloak). Have you told her?

CHRISTY. She made me. (He shuts the door; yawns; and loafs across
to the sofa where he sits down and presently drops off to sleep.)

Anderson looks compassionately at Mrs. Dudgeon. Then he hangs his
cloak and hat on the rack. Mrs. Dudgeon dries her eyes and looks
up at him.

ANDERSON. Sister: the Lord has laid his hand very heavily upon
you.

MRS. DUDGEON (with intensely recalcitrant resignation). It's His
will, I suppose; and I must bow to it. But I do think it hard.
What call had Timothy to go to Springtown, and remind everybody
that he belonged to a man that was being hanged?--and
(spitefully) that deserved it, if ever a man did.

ANDERSON (gently). They were brothers, Mrs. Dudgeon.

MRS. DUDGEON. Timothy never acknowledged him as his brother after
we were married: he had too much respect for me to insult me with
such a brother. Would such a selfish wretch as Peter have come
thirty miles to see Timothy hanged, do you think? Not thirty
yards, not he. However, I must bear my cross as best I may: least
said is soonest mended.

ANDERSON (very grave, coming down to the fire to stand with his
back to it). Your eldest son was present at the execution, Mrs.
Dudgeon.

MRS. DUDGEON (disagreeably surprised). Richard?

ANDERSON (nodding). Yes.

MRS. DUDGEON (vindictively). Let it be a warning to him. He may
end that way himself, the wicked, dissolute, godless--(she
suddenly stops; her voice fails; and she asks, with evident
dread) Did Timothy see him?

ANDERSON. Yes.

MRS. DUDGEON (holding her breath). Well?

ANDERSON. He only saw him in the crowd: they did not speak. (Mrs.
Dudgeon, greatly relieved, exhales the pent up breath and sits at
her ease again.) Your husband was greatly touched and impressed
by his brother's awful death. (Mrs. Dudgeon sneers. Anderson
breaks off to demand with some indignation) Well, wasn't it only
natural, Mrs. Dudgeon? He softened towards his prodigal son in
that moment. He sent for him to come to see him.

MRS. DUDGEON (her alarm renewed). Sent for Richard!

ANDERSON. Yes; but Richard would not come. He sent his father a
message; but I'm sorry to say it was a wicked message--an awful
message.

MRS. DUDGEON. What was it?

ANDERSON. That he would stand by his wicked uncle, and stand
against his good parents, in this world and the next.

MRS. DUDGEON (implacably). He will be punished for it. He will be
punished for it--in both worlds.

ANDERSON. That is not in our hands, Mrs. Dudgeon.

MRS. DUDGEON. Did I say it was, Mr. Anderson. We are told that
the wicked shall be punished. Why should we do our duty and keep
God's law if there is to be no difference made between us and
those who follow their own likings and dislikings, and make a
jest of us and of their Maker's word?

ANDERSON. Well, Richard's earthly father has been merciful and
his heavenly judge is the father of us all.

MRS. DUDGEON (forgetting herself). Richard's earthly father was a
softheaded--

ANDERSON (shocked). Oh!

MRS. DUDGEON (with a touch of shame).  Well, I am Richard's
mother. If I am against him who has any right to be for him?
(Trying to conciliate him.) Won't you sit down, Mr. Anderson? I
should have asked you before; but I'm so troubled.

ANDERSON. Thank you-- (He takes a chair from beside the
fireplace, and turns it so that he can sit comfortably at the
fire. When he is seated he adds, in the tone of a man who knows
that he is opening a difficult subject.) Has Christy told you
about the new will?

MRS. DUDGEON (all her fears returning). The new will! Did
Timothy--? (She breaks off, gasping, unable to complete the
question.)

ANDERSON. Yes. In his last hours he changed his mind.

MRS. DUDGEON (white with intense rage). And you let him rob me?

ANDERSON. I had no power to prevent him giving what was his to
his own son.

MRS. DUDGEON. He had nothing of his own. His money was the money
I brought him as my marriage portion. It was for me to deal with
my own money and my own son. He dare not have done it if I had
been with him; and well he knew it. That was why he stole away
like a thief to take advantage of the law to rob me by making a
new will behind my back. The more shame on you, Mr. Anderson,--
you, a minister of the gospel--to act as his accomplice in such a
crime.

ANDERSON (rising). I will take no offence at what you say in the
first bitterness of your grief.

MRS. DUDGEON (contemptuously). Grief!

ANDERSON. Well, of your disappointment, if you can find it in
your heart to think that the better word.

MRS. DUDGEON. My heart! My heart! And since when, pray, have you
begun to hold up our hearts as trustworthy guides for us?

ANDERSON (rather guiltily). I--er--

MRS. DUDGEON (vehemently). Don't lie, Mr. Anderson. We are told
that the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked. My heart belonged, not to Timothy, but to
that poor wretched brother of his that has just ended his days
with a rope round his neck--aye, to Peter Dudgeon. You know it:
old Eli Hawkins, the man to whose pulpit you succeeded, though
you are not worthy to loose his shoe latchet, told it you when he
gave over our souls into your charge. He warned me and
strengthened me against my heart, and made me marry a Godfearing
man--as he thought. What else but that discipline has made me the
woman I am? And you, you who followed your heart in your
marriage, you talk to me of what I find in my heart. Go home to
your pretty wife, man; and leave me to my prayers. (She turns
from him and leans with her elbows on the table, brooding over
her wrongs and taking no further notice of him.)

ANDERSON (willing enough to escape). The Lord forbid that I
should come between you and the source of all comfort! (He goes
to the rack for his coat and hat.)

MRS. DUDGEON (without looking at him). The Lord will know what to
forbid and what to allow without your help.

ANDERSON. And whom to forgive, I hope--Eli Hawkins and myself, if
we have ever set up our preaching against His law. (He fastens
his cloak, and is now ready to go.) Just one word--on necessary
business, Mrs. Dudgeon. There is the reading of the will to be
gone through; and Richard has a right to be present. He is in the
town; but he has the grace to say that he does not want to force
himself in here.

MRS. DUDGEON. He shall come here. Does he expect us to leave his
father's house for his convenience? Let them all come, and come
quickly, and go quickly. They shall not make the will an excuse
to shirk half their day's work. I shall be ready, never fear.

ANDERSON (coming back a step or two). Mrs. Dudgeon: I used to
have some little influence with you. When did I lose it?

MRS. DUDGEON (still without turning to him). When you married for
love. Now you're answered.

ANDERSON. Yes: I am answered. (He goes out, musing.)

MRS. DUDGEON (to herself, thinking of her husband). Thief!
Thief!! (She shakes herself angrily out of the chair; throws
back the shawl from her head; and sets to work to prepare the
room for the reading of the will, beginning by replacing
Anderson's chair against the wall, and pushing back her own to
the window. Then she calls, in her hard, driving, wrathful way)
Christy. (No answer: he is fast asleep.) Christy. (She shakes him
roughly.) Get up out of that; and be ashamed of yourself--
sleeping, and your father dead! (She returns to the table; puts
the candle on the mantelshelf; and takes from the table drawer a
red table cloth which she spreads.)

CHRISTY (rising reluctantly). Well, do you suppose we are never
going to sleep until we are out of mourning?

MRS. DUDGEON. I want none of your sulks. Here: help me to set
this table. (They place the table in the middle of the room, with
Christy's end towards the fireplace and Mrs. Dudgeon's towards
the sofa. Christy drops the table as soon as possible, and goes
to the fire, leaving his mother to make the final adjustments of
its position.) We shall have the minister back here with the
lawyer and all the family to read the will before you have done
toasting yourself. Go and wake that girl; and then light the
stove in the shed: you can't have your breakfast here. And mind
you wash yourself, and make yourself fit to receive the company.
(She punctuates these orders by going to the cupboard; unlocking
it; and producing a decanter of wine, which has no doubt stood
there untouched since the last state occasion in the family, and
some glasses, which she sets on the table. Also two green ware
plates, on one of which she puts a barmbrack with a knife beside
it. On the other she shakes some biscuits out of a tin, putting
back one or two, and counting the rest.) Now mind: there are ten
biscuits there: let there be ten there when I come back after
dressing myself. And keep your fingers off the raisins in that
cake. And tell Essie the same. I suppose I can trust you to bring
in the case of stuffed birds without breaking the glass? (She
replaces the tin in the cupboard, which she locks, pocketing the
key carefully.)

CHRISTY (lingering at the fire). You'd better put the inkstand
instead, for the lawyer.

MRS. DUDGEON. That's no answer to make to me, sir. Go and do as
you're told. (Christy turns sullenly to obey.) Stop: take down
that shutter before you go, and let the daylight in: you can't
expect me to do all the heavy work of the house with a great
heavy lout like you idling about.

Christy takes the window bar out of its damps, and puts it aside;
then opens the shutter, showing the grey morning. Mrs. Dudgeon
takes the sconce from the mantelshelf; blows out the candle;
extinguishes the snuff by pinching it with her fingers, first
licking them for the purpose; and replaces the sconce on the
shelf.

CHRISTY (looking through the window). Here's the minister's wife.

MRS. DUDGEON (displeased). What! Is she coming here?

CHRISTY. Yes.

MRS. DUDGEON. What does she want troubling me at this hour,
before I'm properly dressed to receive people?

CHRISTY. You'd better ask her.

MRS. DUDGEON (threateningly). You'd better keep a civil tongue in
your head. (He goes sulkily towards the door. She comes after
him, plying him with instructions.) Tell that girl to come to me
as soon as she's had her breakfast. And  tell her to make herself
fit to be seen before the people. (Christy goes out and slams the
door in her face.) Nice  manners, that! (Someone knocks at the
house door: she turns and cries inhospitably.) Come in. (Judith
Anderson, the  minister's wife, comes in. Judith is more than
twenty years  younger than her husband, though she will never be
as young as he in vitality. She is pretty and proper and
ladylike, and has been admired and petted into an opinion of
herself sufficiently favorable to give her a self-assurance which
serves her instead of strength. She has a pretty taste in dress,
and in her face the pretty lines of a sentimental character
formed by dreams. Even her little self-complacency is pretty,
like a child's vanity. Rather a pathetic creature to any
sympathetic observer who knows how rough a place the world is.
One feels, on the whole, that Anderson might have chosen worse,
and that she, needing protection, could not have chosen better.)
Oh, it's you, is it, Mrs. Anderson?

JUDITH (very politely--almost patronizingly). Yes. Can I do
anything for you, Mrs. Dudgeon? Can I help to get the place ready
before they come to read the will?

MRS. DUDGEON (stiffly). Thank you, Mrs. Anderson, my house is
always ready for anyone to come into.

MRS. ANDERSON (with complacent amiability). Yes, indeed it is.
Perhaps you had rather I did not intrude on you just now.

MRS. DUDGEON. Oh, one more or less will make no difference this
morning, Mrs. Anderson. Now that you're here, you'd better stay.
If you wouldn't mind shutting the door! (Judith smiles, implying
"How stupid of me" and shuts it with an exasperating air of doing
something pretty and becoming.) That's better. I must go and tidy
myself a bit. I suppose you don't mind stopping here to receive
anyone that comes until I'm ready.

JUDITH (graciously giving her leave). Oh yes, certainly. Leave
them to me, Mrs. Dudgeon; and take your time. (She hangs her
cloak and bonnet on the rack.)

MRS. DUDGEON (half sneering). I thought that would be more in
your way than getting the house ready. (Essie comes back.) Oh,
here you are! (Severely) Come here: let me see you. (Essie
timidly goes to her. Mrs. Dudgeon takes her roughly by the arm
and pulls her round to inspect the results of her attempt to
clean and tidy herself--results which show little practice and
less conviction.) Mm! That's what you call doing your hair
properly, I suppose. It's easy to see what you are, and how you
were brought up. (She throws her arms away, and goes on,
peremptorily.) Now you listen to me and do as you're told. You
sit down there in the corner by the fire; and when the company
comes don't dare to speak until you're spoken to. (Essie creeps
away to the fireplace.) Your father's people had better see you
and know you're there: they're as much bound to keep you from
starvation as I am. At any rate they might help. But let me have
no chattering and making free with them, as if you were their
equal. Do you hear?

ESSIE. Yes.

MRS. DUDGEON. Well, then go and do as you're told.

(Essie sits down miserably on the corner of the fender furthest
from the door.) Never mind her, Mrs. Anderson: you know who she
is and what she is. If she gives you any trouble, just tell me;
and I'll settle accounts with her. (Mrs. Dudgeon goes into the
bedroom, shutting the door sharply behind her as if even it had
to be made to do its duty with a ruthless hand.)

JUDITH (patronizing Essie, and arranging the cake and wine on the
table more becomingly). You must not mind if your aunt is strict
with you. She is a very good woman, and desires your good too.

ESSIE (in listless misery). Yes.

JUDITH (annoyed with Essie for her failure to be consoled and
edified, and to appreciate the kindly condescension of the
remark). You are not going to be sullen, I hope, Essie.

ESSIE. No.

JUDITH. That's a good girl! (She places a couple of chairs at the
table with their backs to the window, with a pleasant sense of
being a more thoughtful housekeeper than Mrs. Dudgeon.) Do you
know any of your father's relatives?

ESSIE. No. They wouldn't have anything to do with him: they were
too religious. Father used to talk about Dick Dudgeon; but I
never saw him.

JUDITH (ostentatiously shocked). Dick Dudgeon! Essie: do you wish
to be a really respectable and grateful girl, and to make a place
for yourself here by steady good conduct?

ESSIE (very half-heartedly). Yes.

JUDITH. Then you must never mention the name of Richard Dudgeon--
never even think about him. He is a bad man.

ESSIE. What has he done?

JUDITH. You must not ask questions about him, Essie. You are too
young to know what it is to be a bad man. But he is a smuggler;
and he lives with gypsies; and he has no love for his mother and
his family; and he wrestles and plays games on Sunday instead of
going to church. Never let him into your presence, if you can
help it, Essie; and try to keep yourself and all womanhood
unspotted by contact with such men.

ESSIE. Yes.

JUDITH (again displeased). I am afraid you say Yes and No without
thinking very deeply.

ESSIE. Yes. At least I mean--

JUDITH (severely). What do you mean?

ESSIE (almost crying). Only--my father was a smuggler; and--
(Someone knocks.)

JUDITH. They are beginning to come. Now remember your aunt's
directions, Essie; and be a good girl. (Christy comes back with
the stand of stuffed birds under a glass case, and an inkstand,
which he places on the table.) Good morning, Mr. Dudgeon. Will
you open the door, please: the people have come.

CHRISTY. Good morning. (He opens the house door.)

The morning is now fairly bright and warm; and Anderson, who is
the first to enter, has left his cloak at home. He is accompanied
by Lawyer Hawkins, a brisk, middleaged man in brown riding
gaiters and yellow breeches, looking as much squire as solicitor.
He and Anderson are allowed precedence as representing the
learned professions. After them comes the family, headed by the
senior uncle, William Dudgeon, a large, shapeless man,
bottle-nosed and evidently no ascetic at table. His clothes
are not the clothes, nor his anxious wife the wife, of a
prosperous man. The junior uncle, Titus Dudgeon, is a wiry little
terrier of a man, with an immense and visibly purse-proud wife,
both free from the cares of the William household.

Hawkins at once goes briskly to the table and takes the chair
nearest the sofa, Christy having left the inkstand there. He
puts his hat on the floor beside him, and produces the will.
Uncle William comes to the fire and stands on the hearth warming
his coat tails, leaving Mrs. William derelict near the door.
Uncle Titus, who is the lady's man of the family, rescues her
by giving her his disengaged arm and bringing her to the sofa,
where he sits down warmly between his own lady and his
brother's. Anderson hangs up his hat and waits for a word
with Judith.

JUDITH. She will be here in a moment. Ask them to wait. (She taps
at the bedroom door. Receiving an answer from within, she opens
it and passes through.)

ANDERSON (taking his place at the table at the opposite end to
Hawkins). Our poor afflicted sister will be with us in a moment.
Are we all here?

CHRISTY (at the house door, which he has just shut). All except
Dick.

The callousness with which Christy names the reprobate jars on
the moral sense of the family. Uncle William shakes his head
slowly and repeatedly. Mrs. Titus catches her breath convulsively
through her nose. Her husband speaks.

UNCLE TITUS. Well, I hope he will have the grace not to come. I
hope so.

The Dudgeons all murmur assent, except Christy, who goes to the
window and posts himself there, looking out. Hawkins smiles
secretively as if he knew something that would change their tune
if they knew it. Anderson is uneasy: the love of solemn family
councils, especially funereal ones, is not in his nature. Judith
appears at the bedroom door.

JUDITH (with gentle impressiveness). Friends, Mrs. Dudgeon. (She
takes the chair from beside the fireplace; and places it for Mrs.
Dudgeon, who comes from the bedroom in black, with a clean
handkerchief to her eyes. All rise, except Essie. Mrs. Titus and
Mrs. William produce equally clean handkerchiefs and weep. It is
an affecting moment.)

UNCLE WILLIAM. Would it comfort you, sister, if we were to offer
up a prayer?

UNCLE TITUS. Or sing a hymn?

ANDERSON (rather hastily). I have been with our sister this
morning already, friends. In our hearts we ask a blessing.

ALL (except Essie). Amen.

They all sit down, except Judith, who stands behind Mrs.
Dudgeon's chair.

JUDITH (to Essie). Essie: did you say Amen?

ESSIE (scaredly). No.

JUDITH. Then say it, like a good girl.

ESSIE. Amen.

UNCLE WILLIAM (encouragingly). That's right: that's right. We
know who you are; but we are willing to be kind to you if you are
a good girl and deserve it. We are all equal before the Throne.

This republican sentiment does not please the women, who are
convinced that the Throne is precisely the place where their
superiority, often questioned in this world, will be recognized
and rewarded.

CHRISTY (at the window). Here's Dick.

Anderson and Hawkins look round sociably. Essie, with a gleam of
interest breaking through her misery, looks up. Christy grins and
gapes expectantly at the door. The rest are petrified with the
intensity of their sense of Virtue menaced with outrage by the
approach of flaunting Vice. The reprobate appears in the doorway,
graced beyond his alleged merits by the morning sunlight. He is
certainly the best looking member of the family; but his
expression is reckless and sardonic, his manner defiant and
satirical, his dress picturesquely careless. Only his forehead
and mouth betray an extraordinary steadfastness, and his eyes are
the eyes of a fanatic.

RICHARD (on the threshold, taking off his hat). Ladies and
gentlemen: your servant, your very humble servant. (With
this comprehensive insult, he throws his hat to Christy with a
suddenness that makes him jump like a negligent wicket keeper,
and comes into the middle of the room, where he turns and
deliberately surveys the company.) How happy you all look!
how glad to see me! (He turns towards Mrs. Dudgeon's chair;
and his lip rolls up horribly from his dog tooth as he meets her
look of undisguised hatred.) Well, mother: keeping up appearances
as usual? that's right, that's right. (Judith pointedly moves
away from his neighborhood to the other side of the kitchen,
holding her skirt instinctively as if to save it from
contamination. Uncle Titus promptly marks his approval of her
action by rising from the sofa, and placing a chair for her to
sit down upon.) What! Uncle William! I haven't seen you
since you gave up drinking. (Poor Uncle William, shamed,
would protest; but Richard claps him heartily on his shoulder,
adding) you have given it up, haven't you? (releasing him with a
playful push) of course you have: quite right too; you overdid
it. (He turns away from Uncle William and makes for the sofa.)
And now, where is that upright horsedealer Uncle Titus? Uncle
Titus: come forth. (He comes upon him holding the chair as Judith
sits down.) As usual, looking after the ladies.

UNCLE TITUS (indignantly). Be ashamed of yourself, sir--

RICHARD (interrupting him and shaking his hand in spite of him).
I am: I am; but I am proud of my uncle--proud of all my relatives
(again surveying them) who could look at them and not be proud
and joyful? (Uncle Titus, overborne, resumes his seat on the
sofa. Richard turns to the table.) Ah, Mr. Anderson, still at the
good work, still shepherding them. Keep them up to the mark,
minister, keep them up to the mark. Come! (with a spring he seats
himself on the table and takes up the decanter) clink a glass
with me, Pastor, for the sake of old times.

ANDERSON. You know, I think, Mr. Dudgeon, that I do not drink
before dinner.

RICHARD. You will, some day, Pastor: Uncle William used to drink
before breakfast. Come: it will give your sermons unction. (He
smells the wine and makes a wry face.) But do not begin on my
mother's company sherry. I stole some when I was six years old;
and I have been a temperate man ever since. (He puts the decanter
down and changes the subject.) So I hear you are married, Pastor,
and that your wife has a most ungodly allowance of good looks.

ANDERSON (quietly indicating Judith). Sir: you are in the
presence of my wife. (Judith rises and stands with stony
propriety.)

RICHARD (quickly slipping down from the table with instinctive
good manners). Your servant, madam: no offence. (He looks at her
earnestly.) You deserve your reputation; but I'm sorry to see by
your expression that you're a good woman.

(She looks shocked, and sits down amid a murmur of indignant
sympathy from his relatives. Anderson, sensible enough to know
that these demonstrations can only gratify and encourage a man
who is deliberately trying to provoke them, remains perfectly
goodhumored.) All the same, Pastor, I respect you more than I did
before. By the way, did I hear, or did I not, that our late
lamented Uncle Peter, though unmarried, was a father?

UNCLE TITUS. He had only one irregular child, sir.

RICHARD. Only one! He thinks one a mere trifle! I blush for you,
Uncle Titus.

ANDERSON. Mr. Dudgeon you are in the presence of your mother and
her grief.

RICHARD. It touches me profoundly, Pastor. By the way, what has
become of the irregular child?

ANDERSON (pointing to Essie). There, sir, listening to you.

RICHARD (shocked into sincerity). What! Why the devil didn't you
tell me that before? Children suffer enough in this house
without-- (He hurries remorsefully to Essie.) Come, little
cousin! never mind me: it was not meant to hurt you. (She looks
up gratefully at him. Her tearstained face affects him violently,
and he bursts out, in a transport of wrath) Who has been making
her cry? Who has been ill-treating her? By God--

MRS. DUDGEON (rising and confronting him). Silence your
blasphemous tongue. I will hear no more of this. Leave my house.

RICHARD. How do you know it's your house until the will is read?
(They look at one another for a moment with intense hatred; and
then she sinks, checkmated, into her chair. Richard goes boldly
up past Anderson to the window, where he takes the railed chair
in his hand.) Ladies and gentlemen: as the eldest son of my late
father, and the unworthy head of this household, I bid you
welcome. By your leave, Minister Anderson: by your leave, Lawyer
Hawkins. The head of the table for the head of the family. (He
places the chair at the table between the minister and the
attorney; sits down between them; and addresses the assembly with
a presidential air.) We meet on a melancholy occasion: a father
dead! an uncle actually hanged, and probably damned. (He shakes
his head deploringly. The relatives freeze with horror.) That's
right: pull your longest faces (his voice suddenly sweetens
gravely as his glance lights on Essie) provided only there is
hope in the eyes of the child. (Briskly.) Now then, Lawyer
Hawkins: business, business. Get on with the will, man.

TITUS. Do not let yourself be ordered or hurried, Mr. Hawkins.

HAWKINS (very politely and willingly). Mr. Dudgeon means no
offence, I feel sure. I will not keep you one second, Mr.
Dudgeon. Just while I get my glasses--(he fumbles for them. The
Dudgeons look at one another with misgiving).

RICHARD. Aha! They notice your civility, Mr. Hawkins. They are
prepared for the worst. A glass of wine to clear your voice
before you begin. (He pours out one for him and hands it; then
pours one for himself.)

HAWKINS. Thank you, Mr. Dudgeon. Your good health, sir.

RICHARD. Yours, sir. (With the glass half way to his lips, he
checks himself, giving a dubious glance at the wine, and adds,
with quaint intensity.) Will anyone oblige me with a glass of
water?

Essie, who has been hanging on his every word and movement, rises
stealthily and slips out behind Mrs. Dudgeon through the bedroom
door, returning presently with a jug and going out of the house
as quietly as possible.

HAWKINS. The will is not exactly in proper legal phraseology.

RICHARD. No: my father died without the consolations of the law.

HAWKINS. Good again, Mr. Dudgeon, good again. (Preparing to read)
Are you ready, sir?

RICHARD. Ready, aye ready. For what we are about to receive, may
the Lord make us truly thankful. Go ahead.

HAWKINS (reading). "This is the last will and testament of me
Timothy Dudgeon on my deathbed at Nevinstown on the road from
Springtown to Websterbridge on this twenty-fourth day of
September, one thousand seven hundred and seventy seven. I hereby
revoke all former wills made by me and declare that I am of sound
mind and know well what I am doing and that this is my real will
according to my own wish and affections."

RICHARD (glancing at his mother). Aha!

HAWKINS (shaking his head). Bad phraseology, sir, wrong
phraseology. "I give and bequeath a hundred pounds to my younger
son Christopher Dudgeon, fifty pounds to be paid to him on the
day of his marriage to Sarah Wilkins if she will have him, and
ten pounds on the birth of each of his children up to the number
of five."

RICHARD. How if she won't have him?

CHRISTY. She will if I have fifty pounds.

RICHARD. Good, my brother. Proceed.

HAWKINS. "I give and bequeath to my wife Annie Dudgeon, born
Annie Primrose"--you see he did not know the law, Mr. Dudgeon:
your mother was not born Annie: she was christened so--"an
annuity of fifty-two pounds a year for life (Mrs. Dudgeon, with
all eyes on her, holds herself convulsively rigid) to be paid out
of the interest on her own money"--there's a way to put it, Mr.
Dudgeon! Her own money!

MRS. DUDGEON. A very good way to put God's truth. It was every
penny my own. Fifty-two pounds a year!

HAWKINS. "And I recommend her for her goodness and piety to the
forgiving care of her children, having stood between them and her
as far as I could to the best of my ability."

MRS. DUDGEON. And this is my reward! (raging inwardly) You know
what I think, Mr. Anderson you know the word I gave to it.

ANDERSON. It cannot be helped, Mrs. Dudgeon. We must take what
comes to us. (To Hawkins.) Go on, sir.

HAWKINS. "I give and bequeath my house at Websterbridge with the
land belonging to it and all the rest of my property soever to my
eldest son and heir, Richard Dudgeon."

RICHARD. Oho! The fatted calf, Minister, the fatted calf.

HAWKINS. "On these conditions--"

RICHARD. The devil! Are there conditions?

HAWKINS. "To wit: first, that he shall not let my brother Peter's
natural child starve or be driven by want to an evil life."

RICHARD (emphatically, striking his fist on the table). Agreed.

Mrs. Dudgeon, turning to look malignantly at Essie, misses her
and looks quickly round to see where she has moved to; then,
seeing that she has left the room without leave, closes her lips
vengefully.

HAWKINS. "Second, that he shall be a good friend to my old horse
Jim"--(again slacking his head) he should have written James,
sir.

RICHARD. James shall live in clover. Go on.

HAWKINS. "--and keep my deaf farm laborer Prodger Feston in his
service."

RICHARD. Prodger Feston shall get drunk every Saturday.

HAWKINS. "Third, that he make Christy a present on his marriage
out of the ornaments in the best room."

RICHARD (holding up the stuffed birds). Here you are, Christy.

CHRISTY (disappointed). I'd rather have the China peacocks.

RICHARD. You shall have both. (Christy is greatly pleased.) Go
on.

HAWKINS. "Fourthly and lastly, that he try to live at peace with
his mother as far as she will consent to it."

RICHARD (dubiously). Hm! Anything more, Mr. Hawkins?

HAWKINS (solemnly). "Finally I gave and bequeath my soul into my
Maker's hands, humbly asking forgiveness for all my sins and
mistakes, and hoping that he will so guide my son that it may not
be said that I have done wrong in trusting to him rather than to
others in the perplexity of my last hour in this strange place."

ANDERSON. Amen.

THE UNCLES AND AUNTS. Amen.

RICHARD. My mother does not say Amen.

MRS. DUDGEON (rising, unable to give up her property without a
struggle). Mr. Hawkins: is that a proper will? Remember, I have
his rightful, legal will, drawn up by yourself, leaving all to
me.

HAWKINS. This is a very wrongly and irregularly worded will, Mrs.
Dudgeon; though (turning politely to Richard) it contains in my
judgment an excellent disposal of his property.

ANDERSON (interposing before Mrs. Dudgeon can retort). That is
not what you are asked, Mr. Hawkins. Is it a legal will?

HAWKINS. The courts will sustain it against the other.

ANDERSON. But why, if the other is more lawfully worded?

HAWKING. Because, sir, the courts will sustain the claim of a
man--and that man the eldest son--against any woman, if they can.
I warned you, Mrs. Dudgeon, when you got me to draw that other
will, that it was not a wise will, and that though you might make
him sign it, he would never be easy until he revoked it. But you
wouldn't take advice; and now Mr. Richard is cock of the walk.
(He takes his hat from the floor; rises; and begins pocketing his
papers and spectacles.)

This is the signal for the breaking-up of the party. Anderson
takes his hat from the rack and joins Uncle William at the fire.
Uncle Titus fetches Judith her things from the rack. The three
on the sofa rise and chat with Hawkins. Mrs. Dudgeon, now
an intruder in her own house, stands erect, crushed by the weight
of the law on women, accepting it, as she has been trained to
accept all monstrous calamities, as proofs of the greatness of
the power that inflicts them, and of her own wormlike
insignificance. For at this time, remember, Mary Wollstonecraft
is as yet only a girl of eighteen, and her Vindication of the
Rights of Women is still fourteen years off. Mrs. Dudgeon is
rescued from her apathy by Essie, who comes back with the jug
full of water. She is taking it to Richard when Mrs. Dudgeon
stops her.

MRS. DUDGEON (threatening her). Where have you been? (Essie,
appalled, tries to answer, but cannot.) How dare you go out by
yourself after the orders I gave you?

ESSIE. He asked for a drink--(she stops, her tongue cleaving to
her palate with terror).

JUDITH (with gentler severity). Who asked for a drink? (Essie,
speechless, points to Richard.)

RICHARD. What! I!

JUDITH (shocked). Oh Essie, Essie!

RICHARD. I believe I did. (He takes a glass and holds it to Essie
to be filled. Her hand shakes.) What! afraid of me?

ESSIE (quickly). No. I-- (She pours out the water.)

RICHARD (tasting it). Ah, you've been up the street to the market
gate spring to get that. (He takes a draught.) Delicious! Thank
you. (Unfortunately, at this moment he chances to catch sight of
Judith's face, which expresses the most prudish disapproval of
his evident attraction for Essie, who is devouring him with her
grateful eyes. His mocking expression returns instantly. He puts
down the glass; deliberately winds his arm round Essie's
shoulders; and brings her into the middle of the company. Mrs.
Dudgeon being in Essie's way as they come past the table, he
says) By your leave, mother (and compels her to make way for
them). What do they call you? Bessie?

ESSIE. Essie.

RICHARD. Essie, to be sure. Are you a good girl, Essie?

ESSIE (greatly disappointed that he, of all people should begin
at her in this way) Yes. (She looks doubtfully at Judith.) I
think so. I mean I--I hope so.

RICHARD. Essie: did you ever hear of a person called the devil?

ANDERSON (revolted). Shame on you, sir, with a mere child--

RICHARD. By your leave, Minister: I do not interfere with your
sermons: do not you interrupt mine. (To Essie.) Do you know what
they call me, Essie?

ESSIE. Dick.

RICHARD (amused: patting her on the shoulder). Yes, Dick; but
something else too. They call me the Devil's Disciple.

ESSIE. Why do you let them?

RICHARD (seriously). Because it's true. I was brought up in the
other service; but I knew from the first that the Devil was my
natural master and captain and friend. I saw that he was in the
right, and that the world cringed to his conqueror only through
fear. I prayed secretly to him; and he comforted me, and saved me
from having my spirit broken in this house of children's tears. I
promised him my soul, and swore an oath that I would stand up for
him in this world and stand by him in the next. (Solemnly) That
promise and that oath made a man of me. From this day this house
is his home; and no child shall cry in it: this hearth is his
altar; and no soul shall ever cower over it in the dark evenings
and be afraid. Now (turning forcibly on the rest) which of you
good men will take this child and rescue her from the house of
the devil?

JUDITH (coming to Essie and throwing a protecting arm about her).
I will. You should be burnt alive.

ESSIE. But I don't want to. (She shrinks back, leaving Richard
and Judith face to face.)

RICHARD (to Judith). Actually doesn't want to, most virtuous
lady!

UNCLE TITUS. Have a care, Richard Dudgeon. The law--

RICHARD (turning threateningly on him). Have a care, you. In an
hour from this there will be no law here but martial law. I
passed the soldiers within six miles on my way here: before noon
Major Swindon's gallows for rebels will be up in the market
place.

ANDERSON (calmly). What have we to fear from that, sir?

RICHARD. More than you think. He hanged the wrong man at
Springtown: he thought Uncle Peter was respectable, because the
Dudgeons had a good name. But his next example will be the best
man in the town to whom he can bring home a rebellious word.
Well, we're all rebels; and you know it.

ALL THE MEN (except Anderson). No, no, no!

RICHARD. Yes, you are. You haven't damned King George up hill and
down dale as I have; but you've prayed for his defeat; and you,
Anthony Anderson, have conducted the service, and sold your
family bible to buy a pair of pistols. They mayn't hang me,
perhaps; because the moral effect of the Devil's Disciple dancing
on nothing wouldn't help them. But a Minister! (Judith, dismayed,
clings to Anderson) or a lawyer! (Hawkins smiles like a man able
to take care of himself) or an upright horsedealer! (Uncle Titus
snarls at him in rags and terror) or a reformed drunkard (Uncle
William, utterly unnerved, moans and wobbles with fear) eh? Would
that show that King George meant business--ha?

ANDERSON (perfectly self-possessed). Come, my dear: he is only
trying to frighten you. There is no danger. (He takes her out of
the house. The rest crowd to the door to follow him, except
Essie, who remains near Richard.)

RICHARD (boisterously derisive). Now then: how many of you will
stay with me; run up the American flag on the devil's house; and
make a fight for freedom? (They scramble out, Christy among them,
hustling one another in their haste.) Ha ha! Long live the devil!
(To Mrs. Dudgeon, who is following them) What mother! are you off
too?

MRS. DUDGEON (deadly pale, with her hand on her heart as if she
had received a deathblow). My curse on you! My dying curse! (She
goes out.)

RICHARD (calling after her). It will bring me luck. Ha ha ha!

ESSIE (anxiously). Mayn't I stay?

RICHARD (turning to her). What! Have they forgotten to save your
soul in their anxiety about their own bodies? Oh yes: you may
stay. (He turns excitedly away again and shakes his fist after
them. His left fist, also clenched, hangs down. Essie seizes it
and kisses it, her tears falling on it. He starts and looks at
it.) Tears! The devil's baptism! (She falls on her knees,
sobbing. He stoops goodnaturedly to raise her, saying) Oh yes,
you may cry that way, Essie, if you like.



ACT II

Minister Anderson's house is in the main street of Websterbridge,
not far from the town hall. To the eye of the eighteenth century
New Englander, it is much grander than the plain farmhouse of the
Dudgeons; but it is so plain itself that a modern house agent
would let both at about the same rent. The chief dwelling room
has the same sort of kitchen fireplace, with boiler, toaster
hanging on the bars, movable iron griddle socketed to the hob,
hook above for roasting, and broad fender, on which stand a
kettle and a plate of buttered toast. The door, between the
fireplace and the corner, has neither panels, fingerplates nor
handles: it is made of plain boards, and fastens with a latch.
The table is a kitchen table, with a treacle colored cover of
American cloth, chapped at the corners by draping. The tea
service on it consists of two thick cups and saucers of the
plainest ware, with milk jug and bowl to match, each large enough
to contain nearly a quart, on a black japanned tray, and, in the
middle of the table, a wooden trencher with a big loaf upon it,
and a square half pound block of butter in a crock. The big oak
press facing the fire from the opposite side of the room, is for
use and storage, not for ornament; and the minister's house coat
hangs on a peg from its door, showing that he is out; for when he
is in it is his best coat that hangs there. His big riding boots
stand beside the press, evidently in their usual place, and
rather proud of themselves. In fact, the evolution of the
minister's kitchen, dining room and drawing room into three
separate apartments has not yet taken place; and so, from the
point of view of our pampered period, he is no better off than
the Dudgeons.

But there is a difference, for all that. To begin with, Mrs.
Anderson is a pleasanter person to live with than Mrs. Dudgeon.
To which Mrs. Dudgeon would at once reply, with reason, that Mrs.
Anderson has no children to look after; no poultry, pigs nor
cattle; a steady and sufficient income not directly dependent
on harvests and prices at fairs; an affectionate husband who is a
tower of strength to her: in short, that life is as easy at the
minister's house as it is hard at the farm. This is true; but to
explain a fact is not to alter it; and however little credit Mrs.
Anderson may deserve for making her home happier, she has
certainly succeeded in doing it. The outward and visible signs of
her superior social pretensions are a drugget on the floor, a
plaster ceiling between the timbers and chairs which, though not
upholstered, are stained and polished. The fine arts are
represented by a mezzotint portrait of some Presbyterian divine,
a copperplate of Raphael's St. Paul preaching at Athens, a rococo
presentation clock on the mantelshelf, flanked by a couple of
miniatures, a pair of crockery dogs with baskets in their mouths,
and, at the corners, two large cowrie shells. A pretty feature of
the room is the low wide latticed window, nearly its whole width,
with little red curtains running on a rod half way up it to serve
as a blind. There is no sofa; but one of the seats, standing near
the press, has a railed back and is long enough to accommodate
two people easily. On the whole, it is rather the sort of room
that the nineteenth century has ended in struggling to get back
to under the leadership of Mr. Philip Webb and his disciples in
domestic architecture, though no genteel clergyman would have
tolerated it fifty years ago.

The evening has closed in; and the room is dark except for the
cosy firelight and the dim oil lamps seen through the window
in the wet street, where there is a quiet, steady, warm, windless
downpour of rain. As the town clock strikes the quarter, Judith
comes in with a couple of candles in earthenware candlesticks,
and sets them on the table. Her self-conscious airs of the
morning are gone: she is anxious and frightened. She goes to the
window and peers into the street. The first thing she sees there
is her husband, hurrying here through the rain. She gives a
little gasp of relief, not very far removed from a sob, and turns
to the door. Anderson comes in, wrapped in a very wet cloak.

JUDITH (running to him). Oh, here you are at last, at last! (She
attempts to embrace him.)

ANDERSON (keeping her off). Take care, my love: I'm wet. Wait
till I get my cloak off. (He places a chair with its back to the
fire; hangs his cloak on it to dry; shakes the rain from his hat
and puts it on the fender; and at last turns with his hands
outstretched to Judith.) Now! (She flies into his arms.) I am not
late, am I? The town clock struck the quarter as I came in at the
front door. And the town clock is always fast.

JUDITH. I'm sure it's slow this evening. I'm so glad you're back.

ANDERSON (taking her more closely in his arms). Anxious, my dear?

JUDITH. A little.

ANDERSON. Why, you've been crying.

JUDITH. Only a little. Never mind: it's all over now. (A bugle
call is heard in the distance. She starts in terror and retreats
to the long seat, listening.) What's that?

ANDERSON (following her tenderly to the seat and making her sit
down with him). Only King George, my dear. He's returning to
barracks, or having his roll called, or getting ready for tea, or
booting or saddling or something. Soldiers don't ring the bell or
call over the banisters when they want anything: they send a boy
out with a bugle to disturb the whole town.

JUDITH. Do you think there is really any danger?

ANDERSON. Not the least in the world.

JUDITH. You say that to comfort me, not because you believe it.

ANDERSON. My dear: in this world there is always danger for those
who are afraid of it. There's a danger that the house will catch
fire in the night; but we shan't sleep any the less soundly for
that.

JUDITH. Yes, I know what you always say; and you're quite right.
Oh, quite right: I know it. But--I suppose I'm not brave: that's
all. My heart shrinks every time I think of the soldiers.

ANDERSON. Never mind that, dear: bravery is none the worse for
costing a little pain.

JUDITH. Yes, I suppose so. (Embracing him again.) Oh how brave
you are, my dear! (With tears in her eyes.) Well, I'll be brave
too: you shan't be ashamed of your wife.

ANDERSON. That's right. Now you make me happy. Well, well! (He
rises and goes cheerily to the fire to dry his shoes.) I called
on Richard Dudgeon on my way back; but he wasn't in.

JUDITH (rising in consternation). You called on that man!

ANDERSON (reassuring her). Oh, nothing happened, dearie. He was
out.

JUDITH (almost in tears, as if the visit were a personal
humiliation to her). But why did you go there?

ANDERSON (gravely). Well, it is all the talk that Major Swindon
is going to do what he did in Springtown--make an example of some
notorious rebel, as he calls us. He pounced on Peter Dudgeon as
the worst character there; and it is the general belief that he
will pounce on Richard as the worst here.

JUDITH. But Richard said--

ANDERSON (goodhumoredly cutting her short). Pooh! Richard said!
He said what he thought would frighten you and frighten me, my
dear. He said what perhaps (God forgive him!) he would like to
believe. It's a terrible thing to think of what death must mean
for a man like that. I felt that I must warn him. I left a
message for him.

JUDITH (querulously). What message?

ANDERSON. Only that I should be glad to see him for a moment on a
matter of importance to himself; and that if he would look in
here when he was passing he would be welcome.

JUDITH (aghast). You asked that man to come here!

ANDERSON. I did.

JUDITH (sinking on the seat and clasping her hands). I hope he
won't come! Oh, I pray that he may not come!

ANDERSON. Why? Don't you want him to be warned?

JUDITH. He must know his danger. Oh, Tony, is it wrong to hate a
blasphemer and a villain? I do hate him! I can't get him out of
my mind: I know he will bring harm with him. He insulted you: he
insulted me: he insulted his mother.

ANDERSON (quaintly). Well, dear, let's forgive him; and then it
won't matter.

JUDITH. Oh, I know it's wrong to hate anybody; but--

ANDERSON (going over to her with humorous tenderness). Come,
dear, you're not so wicked as you think. The worst sin towards
our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent
to them: that's the essence of inhumanity. After all, my dear, if
you watch people carefully, you'll be surprised to find how like
hate is to love. (She starts, strangely touched--even appalled.
He is amused at her.) Yes: I'm quite in earnest. Think of how
some of our married friends worry one another, tax one another,
are jealous of one another, can't bear to let one another out of
sight for a day, are more like jailers and slave-owners than
lovers. Think of those very same people with their enemies,
scrupulous, lofty, self-respecting, determined to be independent
of one another, careful of how they speak of one another--pooh!
haven't you often thought that if they only knew it, they were
better friends to their enemies than to their own husbands and
wives? Come: depend on it, my dear, you are really fonder of
Richard than you are of me, if you only knew it. Eh?

JUDITH. Oh, don't say that: don't say that, Tony, even in jest.
You don't know what a horrible feeling it gives me.

ANDERSON (Laughing). Well, well: never mind, pet. He's a bad man;
and you hate him as he deserves. And you're going to make the
tea, aren't you?

JUDITH (remorsefully). Oh yes, I forgot. I've been keeping you
waiting all this time. (She goes to the fire and puts on the
kettle.)

ANDERSON (going to the press and taking his coat off). Have you
stitched up the shoulder of my old coat?

JUDITH. Yes, dear. (She goes to the table, and sets about putting
the tea into the teapot from the caddy.)

ANDERSON (as he changes his coat for the older one hanging on the
press, and replaces it by the one he has just taken off). Did
anyone call when I was out?

JUDITH. No, only--(someone knocks at the door. With a start which
betrays her intense nervousness, she retreats to the further end
of the table with the tea caddy and spoon, in her hands,
exclaiming) Who's that?

ANDERSON (going to her and patting her encouragingly on the
shoulder). All right, pet, all right. He won't eat you, whoever
he is. (She tries to smile, and nearly makes herself cry. He goes
to the door and opens it. Richard is there, without overcoat or
cloak.) You might have raised the latch and come in, Mr. Dudgeon.
Nobody stands on much ceremony with us. (Hospitably.) Come in.
(Richard comes in carelessly and stands at the table, looking
round the room with a slight pucker of his nose at the
mezzotinted divine on the wall. Judith keeps her eyes on the tea
caddy.) Is it still raining? (He shuts the door.)

RICHARD. Raining like the very (his eye catches Judith's as she
looks quickly and haughtily up)--I beg your pardon; but (showing
that his coat is wet) you see--!

ANDERSON. Take it off, sir; and let it hang before the fire
a while: my wife will excuse your shirtsleeves. Judith: put in
another spoonful of tea for Mr. Dudgeon.

RICHARD (eyeing him cynically). The magic of property, Pastor!
Are even YOU civil to me now that I have succeeded to my father's
estate?

Judith throws down the spoon indignantly.

ANDERSON (quite unruffled, and helping Richard off with his
coat). I think, sir, that since you accept my hospitality, you
cannot have so bad an opinion of it. Sit down. (With the coat in
his hand, he points to the railed seat. Richard, in his
shirtsleeves, looks at him half quarrelsomely for a moment; then,
with a nod, acknowledges that the minister has got the better of
him, and sits down on the seat. Anderson pushes his cloak into a
heap on the seat of the chair at the fire, and hangs Richard's
coat on the back in its place.)

RICHARD. I come, sir, on your own invitation. You left word you
had something important to tell me.

ANDERSON. I have a warning which it is my duty to give you.

RICHARD (quickly rising). You want to preach to me. Excuse me: I
prefer a walk in the rain. (He makes for his coat.)

ANDERSON (stopping him). Don't be alarmed, sir; I am no great
preacher. You are quite safe. (Richard smiles in spite of
himself. His glance softens: he even makes a gesture of excuse.
Anderson, seeing that he has tamed him, now addresses him
earnestly.) Mr. Dudgeon: you are in danger in this town.

RICHARD. What danger?

ANDERSON. Your uncle's danger. Major Swindon's gallows.

RICHARD. It is you who are in danger. I warned you--

ANDERSON (interrupting him goodhumoredly but authoritatively).
Yes, yes, Mr. Dudgeon; but they do not think so in the town. And
even if I were in danger, I have duties here I must not forsake.
But you are a free man. Why should you run any risk?

RICHARD. Do you think I should be any great loss, Minister?

ANDERSON. I think that a man's life is worth saving, whoever it
belongs to. (Richard makes him an ironical bow. Anderson returns
the bow humorously.) Come: you'll have a cup of tea, to prevent
you catching cold?

RICHARD. I observe that Mrs. Anderson is not quite so pressing as
you are, Pastor.

JUDITH (almost stifled with resentment, which she has been
expecting her husband to share and express for her at every
insult of Richard's). You are welcome for my husband's sake. (She
brings the teapot to the fireplace and sets it on the hob.)

RICHARD. I know I am not welcome for my own, madam. (He rises.)
But I think I will not break bread here, Minister.

ANDERSON (cheerily). Give me a good reason for that.

RICHARD. Because there is something in you that I respect, and
that makes me desire to have you for my enemy.

ANDERSON. That's well said. On those terms, sir, I will accept
your enmity or any man's. Judith: Mr. Dudgeon will stay to tea.
Sit down: it will take a few minutes to draw by the fire.
(Richard glances at him with a troubled face; then sits down with
his head bent, to hide a convulsive swelling of his throat.) I
was just saying to my wife, Mr. Dudgeon, that enmity--(she grasps
his hand and looks imploringly at him, doing both with an
intensity that checks him at once) Well, well, I mustn't tell
you, I see; but it was nothing that need leave us worse friend--
enemies, I mean. Judith is a great enemy of yours.

RICHARD. If all my enemies were like Mrs. Anderson I should be
the best Christian in America.

ANDERSON (gratified, patting her hand). You hear that, Judith?
Mr. Dudgeon knows how to turn a compliment.

The latch is lifted from without.

JUDITH (starting). Who is that?

Christy comes in.

CHRISTY (stopping and staring at Richard). Oh, are YOU here?

RICHARD. Yes. Begone, you fool: Mrs. Anderson doesn't want the
whole family to tea at once.

CHRISTY (coming further in). Mother's very ill.

RICHARD. Well, does she want to see ME?

CHRISTY. No.

RICHARD. I thought not.

CHRISTY. She wants to see the minister--at once.

JUDITH (to Anderson). Oh, not before you've had some tea.

ANDERSON. I shall enjoy it more when I come back, dear. (He is
about to take up his cloak.)

CHRISTY. The rain's over.

ANDERSON (dropping the cloak and picking up his hat from the
fender). Where is your mother, Christy?

CHRISTY. At Uncle Titus's.

ANDERSON. Have you fetched the doctor?

CHRISTY. No: she didn't tell me to.

ANDERSON. Go on there at once: I'll overtake you on his doorstep.
(Christy turns to go.) Wait a moment. Your brother must be
anxious to know the particulars.

RICHARD. Psha! not I: he doesn't know; and I don't care.
(Violently.) Be off, you oaf. (Christy runs out. Richard adds, a
little shamefacedly) We shall know soon enough.

ANDERSON. Well, perhaps you will let me bring you the news
myself. Judith: will you give Mr. Dudgeon his tea, and keep him
here until I return?

JUDITH (white and trembling). Must I--

ANDERSON (taking her hands and interrupting her to cover her
agitation). My dear: I can depend on you?

JUDITH (with a piteous effort to be worthy of his trust). Yes.

ANDERSON (pressing her hand against his cheek). You will not mind
two old people like us, Mr. Dudgeon. (Going.) I shall not say
good evening: you will be here when I come back. (He goes out.)

They watch him pass the window, and then look at each other
dumbly, quite disconcerted. Richard, noting the quiver of her
lips, is the first to pull himself together.

RICHARD. Mrs. Anderson: I am perfectly aware of the nature of
your sentiments towards me. I shall not intrude on you. Good
evening. (Again he starts for the fireplace to get his coat.)

JUDITH (getting between him and the coat). No, no. Don't go:
please don't go.

RICHARD (roughly). Why? You don't want me here.

JUDITH. Yes, I--(wringing her hands in despair) Oh, if I tell you
the truth, you will use it to torment me.

RICHARD (indignantly). Torment! What right have you to say that?
Do you expect me to stay after that?

JUDITH. I want you to stay; but (suddenly raging at him like an
angry child) it is not because I like you.

RICHARD. Indeed!

JUDITH. Yes: I had rather you did go than mistake me about that.
I hate and dread you; and my husband knows it. If you are not
here when he comes back, he will believe that I disobeyed him and
drove you away.

RICHARD (ironically). Whereas, of course, you have really been so
kind and hospitable and charming to me that I only want to go
away out of mere contrariness, eh?

Judith, unable to bear it, sinks on the chair and bursts into
tears.

RICHARD. Stop, stop, stop, I tell you. Don't do that. (Putting
his hand to his breast as if to a wound.) He wrung my heart by
being a man. Need you tear it by being a woman? Has he not raised
you above my insults, like himself? (She stops crying, and
recovers herself somewhat, looking at him with a scared
curiosity.) There: that's right. (Sympathetically.) You're better
now, aren't you? (He puts his hand encouragingly on her shoulder.
She instantly rises haughtily, and stares at him defiantly. He at
once drops into his usual sardonic tone.) Ah, that's better. You
are yourself again: so is Richard. Well, shall we go to tea like
a quiet respectable couple, and wait for your husband's return?

JUDITH (rather ashamed of herself). If you please. I--I am sorry
to have been so foolish. (She stoops to take up the plate of
toast from the fender.)

RICHARD. I am sorry, for your sake, that I am--what I am. Allow
me. (He takes the plate from her and goes with it to the table.)

JUDITH (following with the teapot). Will you sit down? (He sits
down at the end of the table nearest the press. There is a plate
and knife laid there. The other plate is laid near it; but Judith
stays at the opposite end of the table, next the fire, and takes
her place there, drawing the tray towards her.) Do you take
sugar?

RICHARD. No; but plenty of milk. Let me give you some toast. (He
puts some on the second plate, and hands it to her, with the
knife. The action shows quietly how well he knows that she has
avoided her usual place so as to be as far from him as possible.)

JUDITH (consciously). Thanks. (She gives him his tea.) Won't you
help yourself?

RICHARD. Thanks. (He puts a piece of toast on his own plate; and
she pours out tea for herself.)

JUDITH (observing that he tastes nothing). Don't you like it? You
are not eating anything.

RICHARD. Neither are you.

JUDITH (nervously). I never care much for my tea. Please don't
mind me.

RICHARD (Looking dreamily round). I am thinking. It is all so
strange to me. I can see the beauty and peace of this home: I
think I have never been more at rest in my life than at this
moment; and yet I know quite well I could never live here. It's
not in my nature, I suppose, to be domesticated. But it's very
beautiful: it's almost holy. (He muses a moment, and then laughs
softly.)

JUDITH (quickly). Why do you laugh?

RICHARD. I was thinking that if any stranger came in here now, he
would take us for man and wife.

JUDITH (taking offence). You mean, I suppose, that you are more
my age than he is.

RICHARD (staring at this unexpected turn). I never thought of
such a thing. (Sardonic again.) I see there is another side to
domestic joy.

JUDITH (angrily). I would rather have a husband whom everybody
respects than--than--

RICHARD. Than the devil's disciple. You are right; but I daresay
your love helps him to be a good man, just as your hate helps me
to be a bad one.

JUDITH. My husband has been very good to you. He has forgiven you
for insulting him, and is trying to save you. Can you not forgive
him for being so much better than you are? How dare you belittle
him by putting yourself in his place?

RICHARD. Did I?

JUDITH. Yes, you did. You said that if anybody came in they would
take us for man and--(she stops, terror-stricken, as a squad of
soldiers tramps past the window) The English soldiers! Oh, what
do they--

RICHARD (listening). Sh!

A VOICE (outside). Halt! Four outside: two in with me.

Judith half rises, listening and looking with dilated eyes at
Richard, who takes up his cup prosaically, and is drinking his
tea when the latch goes up with a sharp click, and an English
sergeant walks into the room with two privates, who post
themselves at the door. He comes promptly to the table between
them.

THE SERGEANT. Sorry to disturb you, mum! duty! Anthony Anderson:
I arrest you in King George's name as a rebel.

JUDITH (pointing at Richard). But that is not-- (He looks up
quickly at her, with a face of iron. She stops her mouth hastily
with the hand she has raised to indicate him, and stands staring
affrightedly.)

THE SERGEANT. Come, Parson; put your coat on and come along.

RICHARD. Yes: I'll come. (He rises and takes a step towards his
own coat; then recollects himself, and, with his back to the
sergeant, moves his gaze slowly round the room without turning
his head until he sees Anderson's black coat hanging up on the
press. He goes composedly to it; takes it down; and puts it on.
The idea of himself as a parson tickles him: he looks down at the
black sleeve on his arm, and then smiles slyly at Judith, whose
white face shows him that what she is painfully struggling to
grasp is not the humor of the situation but its horror. He turns
to the sergeant, who is approaching him with a pair of handcuffs
hidden behind him, and says lightly) Did you ever arrest a man of
my cloth before, Sergeant?

THE SERGEANT (instinctively respectful, half to the black coat,
half to Richard's good breeding). Well, no sir. At least, only an
army chaplain. (Showing the handcuffs.) I'm sorry, air; but
duty--

RICHARD. Just so, Sergeant. Well, I'm not ashamed of them: thank
you kindly for the apology. (He holds out his hands.)

SERGEANT (not availing himself of the offer). One gentleman to
another, sir. Wouldn't you like to say a word to your missis,
sir, before you go?

RICHARD (smiling). Oh, we shall meet again before--eh? (Meaning
"before you hang me.")

SERGEANT (loudly, with ostentatious cheerfulness). Oh, of course,
of course. No call for the lady to distress herself. Still--(in a
lower voice, intended for Richard alone) your last chance, sir.

They look at one another significantly for a moment. Than Richard
exhales a deep breath and turns towards Judith.

RICHARD (very distinctly). My love. (She looks at him, pitiably
pale, and tries to answer, but cannot--tries also to come to him,
but cannot trust herself to stand without the support of the
table.) This gallant gentleman is good enough to allow us a
moment of leavetaking. (The sergeant retires delicately and joins
his men near the door.) He is trying to spare you the truth; but
you had better know it. Are you listening to me? (She signifies
assent.) Do you understand that I am going to my death? (She
signifies that she understands.) Remember, you must find our
friend who was with us just now. Do you understand? (She
signifies yes.) See that you get him safely out of harm's way.
Don't for your life let him know of my danger; but if he finds it
out, tell him that he cannot save me: they would hang him; and
they would not spare me. And tell him that I am steadfast in my
religion as he is in his, and that he may depend on me to the
death. (He turns to go, and meets the eye of the sergeant, who
looks a little suspicious. He considers a moment, and then,
turning roguishly to Judith with something of a smile breaking
through his earnestness, says) And now, my dear, I am afraid the
sergeant will not believe that you love me like a wife unless you
give one kiss before I go.

He approaches her and holds out his arms. She quits the table and
almost falls into them.

JUDITH (the words choking her). I ought to--it's murder--

RICHARD. No: only a kiss (softly to her) for his sake.

JUDITH. I can't. You must--

RICHARD (folding her in his arms with an impulse of compassion
for her distress). My poor girl!

Judith, with a sudden effort, throws her arms round him; kisses
him; and swoons away, dropping from his arms to the ground as if
the kiss had killed her.

RICHARD (going quickly to the sergeant). Now, Sergeant: quick,
before she comes to. The handcuffs. (He puts out his hands.)

SERGEANT (pocketing them). Never mind, sir: I'll trust you.
You're a game one. You ought to a bin a soldier, sir. Between
them two, please. (The soldiers place themselves one before
Richard and one behind him. The sergeant opens the door.)

RICHARD (taking a last look round him). Goodbye, wife: goodbye,
home. Muffle the drums, and quick march!

The sergeant signs to the leading soldier to march. They file out
quickly.

*****************************************************************

When Anderson returns from Mrs. Dudgeon's he is astonished to
find the room apparently empty and almost in darkness except for
the glow from the fire; for one of the candles has burnt out, and
the other is at its last flicker.

ANDERSON. Why, what on earth--? (Calling) Judith, Judith! (He
listens: there is no answer.) Hm! (He goes to the cupboard; takes
a candle from the drawer; lights it at the flicker of the
expiring one on the table; and looks wonderingly at the untasted
meal by its light. Then he sticks it in the candlestick; takes
off his hat; and scratches his head, much puzzled. This action
causes him to look at the floor for the first time; and there he
sees Judith lying motionless with her eyes closed. He runs to her
and stoops beside her, lifting her head.) Judith.

JUDITH (waking; for her swoon has passed into the sleep of
exhaustion after suffering). Yes. Did you call? What's the
matter?

ANDERSON. I've just come in and found you lying here with the
candles burnt out and the tea poured out and cold. What has
happened?

JUDITH (still astray). I don't know. Have I been asleep? I
suppose--(she stops blankly) I don't know.

ANDERSON (groaning). Heaven forgive me, I left you alone with
that scoundrel. (Judith remembers. With an agonized cry, she
clutches his shoulders and drags herself to her feet as he rises
with her. He clasps her tenderly in his arms.) My poor pet!

JUDITH (frantically clinging to him). What shall I do? Oh my God,
what shall I do?

ANDERSON. Never mind, never mind, my dearest dear: it was my
fault. Come: you're safe now; and you're not hurt, are you? (He
takes his arms from her to see whether she can stand.) There:
that's right, that's right. If only you are not hurt, nothing
else matters.

JUDITH. No, no, no: I'm not hurt.

ANDERSON. Thank Heaven for that! Come now: (leading her to the
railed seat and making her sit down beside him) sit down and
rest: you can tell me about it to-morrow. Or, (misunderstanding
her distress) you shall not tell me at all if it worries you.
There, there! (Cheerfully.) I'll make you some fresh tea: that
will set you up again. (He goes to the table, and empties the
teapot into the slop bowl.)

JUDITH (in a strained tone). Tony.

ANDERSON. Yes, dear?

JUDITH. Do you think we are only in a dream now?

ANDERSON (glancing round at her for a moment with a pang of
anxiety, though he goes on steadily and cheerfully putting fresh
tea into the pot). Perhaps so, pet. But you may as well dream a
cup of tea when you're about it.

JUDITH. Oh, stop, stop. You don't know-- (Distracted she buries
her face in her knotted hands.)

ANDERSON (breaking down and coming to her). My dear, what is it?
I can't bear it any longer: you must tell me. It was all my
fault: I was mad to trust him.

JUDITH. No: don't say that. You mustn't say that. He--oh no, no:
I can't. Tony: don't speak to me. Take my hands--both my hands.
(He takes them, wondering.) Make me think of you, not of him.
There's danger, frightful danger; but it is your danger; and I
can't keep thinking of it: I can't, I can't: my mind goes back to
his danger. He must be saved--no: you must be saved: you, you,
you. (She springs up as if to do something or go somewhere,
exclaiming) Oh, Heaven help me!

ANDERSON (keeping his seat and holding her hands with resolute
composure). Calmly, calmly, my pet. You're quite distracted.

JUDITH. I may well be. I don't know what to do. I don't know what
to do. (Tearing her hands away.) I must save him. (Anderson rises
in alarm as she runs wildly to the door. It is opened in her face
by Essie, who hurries in, full of anxiety. The surprise is so
disagreeable to Judith that it brings her to her senses. Her tone
is sharp and angry as she demands) What do you want?

ESSIE. I was to come to you.

ANDERSON. Who told you to?

ESSIE (staring at him, as if his presence astonished her).
Are you here?

JUDITH. Of course. Don't be foolish, child.

ANDERSON. Gently, dearest: you'll frighten her. (Going between
them.) Come here, Essie. (She comes to him.) Who sent you?

ESSIE. Dick. He sent me word by a soldier. I was to come here at
once and do whatever Mrs. Anderson told me.

ANDERSON (enlightened). A soldier! Ah, I see it all now! They
have arrested Richard. (Judith makes a gesture of despair.)

ESSIE. No. I asked the soldier. Dick's safe. But the soldier said
you had been taken--

ANDERSON. I! (Bewildered, he turns to Judith for an explanation.)

JUDITH (coaxingly) All right, dear: I understand. (To Essie.)
Thank you, Essie, for coming; but I don't need you now. You may
go home.

ESSIE (suspicious) Are you sure Dick has not been touched?
Perhaps he told the soldier to say it was the minister.
(Anxiously.) Mrs. Anderson: do you think it can have been that?

ANDERSON. Tell her the truth if it is so, Judith. She will learn
it from the first neighbor she meets in the street. (Judith turns
away and covers her eyes with her hands.)

ESSIE (wailing). But what will they do to him? Oh, what will they
do to him? Will they hang him? (Judith shudders convulsively, and
throws herself into the chair in which Richard sat at the tea
table.)

ANDERSON (patting Essie's shoulder and trying to comfort her). I
hope not. I hope not. Perhaps if you're very quiet and patient,
we may be able to help him in some way.

ESSIE. Yes--help him--yes, yes, yes. I'll be good.

ANDERSON. I must go to him at once, Judith.

JUDITH (springing up). Oh no. You must go away--far away, to some
place of safety.

ANDERSON. Pooh!

JUDITH (passionately). Do you want to kill me? Do you think I can
bear to live for days and days with every knock at the door--
every footstep--giving me a spasm of terror? to lie awake for
nights and nights in an agony of dread, listening for them to
come and arrest you?

ANDERSON. Do you think it would be better to know that I had run
away from my post at the first sign of danger?

JUDITH (bitterly). Oh, you won't go. I know it. You'll stay; and
I shall go mad.

ANDERSON. My dear, your duty--

JUDITH (fiercely). What do I care about my duty?

ANDERSON (shocked). Judith!

JUDITH. I am doing my duty. I am clinging to my duty. My duty is
to get you away, to save you, to leave him to his fate. (Essie
utters a cry of distress and sinks on the chair at the fire,
sobbing silently.) My instinct is the same as hers--to save him
above all things, though it would be so much better for him to
die! so much greater! But I know you will take your own way as he
took it. I have no power. (She sits down sullenly on the railed
seat.) I'm only a woman: I can do nothing but sit here and
suffer. Only, tell him I tried to save you--that I did my best to
save you.

ANDERSON. My dear, I am afraid he will be thinking more of his
own danger than of mine.

JUDITH. Stop; or I shall hate you.

ANDERSON (remonstrating). Come, am I to leave you if you talk
like this! your senses. (He turns to Essie.) Essie.

ESSIE (eagerly rising and drying her eyes). Yes?

ANDERSON. Just wait outside a moment, like a good girl: Mrs.
Anderson is not well. (Essie looks doubtful.) Never fear: I'll
come to you presently; and I'll go to Dick.

ESSIE. You are sure you will go to him? (Whispering.) You won't
let her prevent you?

ANDERSON (smiling). No, no: it's all right. All right. (She
goes.) That's a good girl. (He closes the door, and returns to
Judith.)

JUDITH (seated--rigid). You are going to your death.

ANDERSON (quaintly). Then I shall go in my best coat, dear. (He
turns to the press, beginning to take off his coat.) Where--? (He
stares at the empty nail for a moment; then looks quickly round
to the fire; strides across to it; and lifts Richard's coat.)
Why, my dear, it seems that he has gone in my best coat.

JUDITH (still motionless). Yes.

ANDERSON. Did the soldiers make a mistake?

JUDITH. Yes: they made a mistake.

ANDERSON. He might have told them. Poor fellow, he was too upset,
I suppose.

JUDITH. Yes: he might have told them. So might I.

ANDERSON. Well, it's all very puzzling--almost funny. It's
curious how these little things strike us even in the most--
(he breaks of and begins putting on Richard's coat) I'd
better take him his own coat. I know what he'll say--(imitating
Richard's sardonic manner) "Anxious about my soul, Pastor, and
also about your best coat." Eh?

JUDITH. Yes, that is just what he will say to you. (Vacantly.) It
doesn't matter: I shall never see either of you again.

ANDERSON (rallying her). Oh pooh, pooh, pooh! (He sits down
beside her.) Is this how you keep your promise that I shan't be
ashamed of my brave wife?

JUDITH. No: this is how I break it. I cannot keep my promises to
him: why should I keep my promises to you?

ANDERSON. Don't speak so strangely, my love. It sounds insincere
to me. (She looks unutterable reproach at him.) Yes, dear,
nonsense is always insincere; and my dearest is talking nonsense.
Just nonsense. (Her face darkens into dumb obstinacy. She stares
straight before her, and does not look at him again, absorbed in
Richard's fate. He scans her face; sees that his rallying has
produced no effect; and gives it up, making no further effort to
conceal his anxiety.) I wish I knew what has frightened you so.
Was there a struggle? Did he fight?

JUDITH. No. He smiled.

ANDERSON. Did he realise his danger, do you think?

JUDITH. He realised yours.

ANDERSON. Mine!

JUDITH (monotonously). He said, "See that you get him safely out
of harm's way." I promised: I can't keep my promise. He said,
"Don't for your life let him know of my danger." I've told you of
it. He said that if you found it out, you could not save him--
that they will hang him and not spare you.

ANDERSON (rising in generous indignation). And you think that I
will let a man with that much good in him die like a dog, when a
few words might make him die like a Christian? I'm ashamed of
you, Judith.

JUDITH. He will be steadfast in his religion as you are in yours;
and you may depend on him to the death. He said so.

ANDERSON. God forgive him! What else did he say?

JUDITH. He said goodbye.

ANDERSON (fidgeting nervously to and fro in great concern). Poor
fellow, poor fellow! You said goodbye to him in all kindness and
charity, Judith, I hope.

JUDITH. I kissed him.

ANDERSON. What! Judith!

JUDITH. Are you angry?

ANDERSON. No, no. You were right: you were right. Poor fellow,
poor fellow! (Greatly distressed.) To be hanged like that at his
age! And then did they take him away?

JUDITH (wearily). Then you were here: that's the next thing I
remember. I suppose I fainted. Now bid me goodbye, Tony. Perhaps
I shall faint again. I wish I could die.

ANDERSON. No, no, my dear: you must pull yourself together and be
sensible. I am in no danger--not the least in the world.

JUDITH (solemnly). You are going to your death, Tony--your sure
death, if God will let innocent men be murdered. They will not
let you see him: they will arrest you the moment you give your
name. It was for you the soldiers came.

ANDERSON (thunderstruck). For me!!! (His fists clinch; his neck
thickens; his face reddens; the fleshy purses under his eyes
become injected with hot blood; the man of peace vanishes,
transfigured into a choleric and formidable man of war. Still,
she does not come out of her absorption to look at him: her eyes
are steadfast with a mechanical reflection of Richard's stead-
fastness.)

JUDITH. He took your place: he is dying to save you. That is why
he went in your coat. That is why I kissed him.

ANDERSON (exploding). Blood an' owns! (His voice is rough and
dominant, his gesture full of brute energy.) Here! Essie, Essie!

ESSIE (running in). Yes.

ANDERSON (impetuously). Off with you as hard as you can run, to
the inn. Tell them to saddle the fastest and strongest horse they
have (Judith rises breathless, and stares at him incredulously)--
the chestnut mare, if she's fresh--without a moment's delay. Go
into the stable yard and tell the black man there that I'll give
him a silver dollar if the horse is waiting for me when I come,
and that I am close on your heels. Away with you. (His energy
sends Essie flying from the room. He pounces on his riding boots;
rushes with them to the chair at the fire; and begins pulling
them on.)

JUDITH (unable to believe such a thing of him). You are not going
to him!

ANDERSON (busy with the boots). Going to him! What good would
that do? (Growling to himself as he gets the first boot on with a
wrench) I'll go to them, so I will. (To Judith peremptorily) Get
me the pistols: I want them. And money, money: I want money--all
the money in the house. (He stoops over the other boot,
grumbling) A great satisfaction it would be to him to have my
company on the gallows. (He pulls on the boot.)

JUDITH. You are deserting him, then?

ANDERSON. Hold your tongue, woman; and get me the pistols. (She
goes to the press and takes from it a leather belt with two
pistols, a powder horn, and a bag of bullets attached to it. She
throws it on the table. Then she unlocks a drawer in the press
and takes out a purse. Anderson grabs the belt and buckles it on,
saying) If they took him for me in my coat, perhaps they'll take
me for him in his. (Hitching the belt into its place) Do I look
like him?

JUDITH (turning with the purse in her hand). Horribly unlike him.

ANDERSON (snatching the purse from her and emptying it on the
table). Hm! We shall see.

JUDITH (sitting down helplessly). Is it of any use to pray, do
you think, Tony?

ANDERSON (counting the money). Pray! Can we pray Swindon's rope
off Richard's neck?

JUDITH. God may soften Major Swindon's heart.

ANDERSON (contemptuously--pocketing a handful of money). Let him,
then. I am not God; and I must go to work another way. (Judith
gasps at the blasphemy. He throws the purse on the table.) Keep
that. I've taken 25 dollars.

JUDITH. Have you forgotten even that you are a minister?

ANDERSON. Minister be--faugh! My hat: where's my hat? (He
snatches up hat and cloak, and puts both on in hot haste.) Now
listen, you. If you can get a word with him by pretending you're
his wife, tell him to hold his tongue until morning: that will
give me all the start I need.

JUDITH (solemnly). You may depend on him to the death.

ANDERSON. You're a fool, a fool, Judith (for a moment checking
the torrent of his haste, and speaking with something of his old
quiet and impressive conviction). You don't know the man you're
married to. (Essie returns. He swoops at her at once.) Well: is
the horse ready?

ESSIE (breathless). It will be ready when you come.

ANDERSON. Good. (He makes for the door.)

JUDITH (rising and stretching out her arms after him
involuntarily). Won't you say goodbye?

ANDERSON. And waste another half minute! Psha! (He rushes out
like an avalanche.)

ESSIE (hurrying to Judith). He has gone to save Richard, hasn't
he?

JUDITH. To save Richard! No: Richard has saved him. He has gone
to save himself. Richard must die.

Essie screams with terror and falls on her knees, hiding her
face. Judith, without heeding her, looks rigidly straight in
front of her, at the vision of Richard, dying.



ACT III

Early next morning the sergeant, at the British headquarters in
the Town Hall, unlocks the door of a little empty panelled
waiting room, and invites Judith to enter. She has had a bad
night, probably a rather delirious one; for even in the reality
of the raw morning, her fixed gaze comes back at moments when her
attention is not strongly held.

The sergeant considers that her feelings do her credit, and is
sympathetic in an encouraging military way. Being a fine figure
of a man, vain of his uniform and of his rank, he feels specially
qualified, in a respectful way, to console her.

SERGEANT. You can have a quiet word with him here, mum.

JUDITH. Shall I have long to wait?

SERGEANT. No, mum, not a minute. We kep him in the Bridewell for
the night; and he's just been brought over here for the court
martial. Don't fret, mum: he slep like a child, and has made a
rare good breakfast.

JUDITH (incredulously). He is in good spirits!

SERGEANT. Tip top, mum. The chaplain looked in to see him last
night; and he won seventeen shillings off him at spoil five. He
spent it among us like the gentleman he is. Duty's duty, mum, of
course; but you're among friends here. (The tramp of a couple of
soldiers is heard approaching.) There: I think he's coming.
(Richard comes in, without a sign of care or captivity in his
bearing. The sergeant nods to the two soldiers, and shows them
the key of the room in his hand. They withdraw.) Your good lady,
sir.

RICHARD (going to her). What! My wife. My adored one. (He takes
her hand and kisses it with a perverse, raffish  gallantry.) How
long do you allow a brokenhearted husband for leave-taking,
Sergeant?

SERGEANT. As long as we can, sir. We shall not disturb you till
the court sits.

RICHARD. But it has struck the hour.

SERGEANT. So it has, sir; but there's a delay. General Burgoyne's
just arrived--Gentlemanly Johnny we call him, sir--and he won't
have done finding fault with everything this side of half past. I
know him, sir: I served with him in Portugal. You may count on
twenty minutes, sir; and by your leave I won't waste any more of
them. (He goes out, locking the door. Richard immediately drops
his raffish manner and turns to Judith with considerate
sincerity.)

RICHARD. Mrs. Anderson: this visit is very kind of you. And how
are you after last night? I had to leave you before you
recovered; but I sent word to Essie to go and look after you. Did
she understand the message?

JUDITH (breathless and urgent). Oh, don't think of me: I haven't
come here to talk about myself. Are they going to--to--(meaning
"to hang you")?

RICHARD (whimsically). At noon, punctually. At least, that was
when they disposed of Uncle Peter. (She shudders.) Is your
husband safe? Is he on the wing?

JUDITH. He is no longer my husband.

RICHARD (opening his eyes wide). Eh!

JUDITH. I disobeyed you. I told him everything. I expected him to
come here and save you. I wanted him to come here and save you.
He ran away instead.

RICHARD. Well, that's what I meant him to do. What good would his
staying have done? They'd only have hanged us both.

JUDITH (with reproachful earnestness). Richard Dudgeon: on your
honour, what would you have done in his place?

RICHARD. Exactly what he has done, of course.

JUDITH. Oh, why will you not be simple with me--honest and
straightforward? If you are so selfish as that, why did you let
them take you last night?

RICHARD (gaily). Upon my life, Mrs. Anderson, I don't know. I've
been asking myself that question ever since; and I can find no
manner of reason for acting as I did.

JUDITH. You know you did it for his sake, believing he was a more
worthy man than yourself.

RICHARD (laughing). Oho! No: that's a very pretty reason, I must
say; but I'm not so modest as that. No: it wasn't for his sake.

JUDITH (after a pause, during which she looks shamefacedly at
him, blushing painfully). Was it for my sake?

RICHARD (gallantly). Well, you had a hand in it. It must have
been a little for your sake. You let them take me, at all events.

JUDITH. Oh, do you think I have not been telling myself that all
night? Your death will be at my door. (Impulsively, she gives him
her hand, and adds, with intense earnestness) If I could save you
as you saved him, I would do it, no matter how cruel the death
was.

RICHARD (holding her hand and smiling, but keeping her almost at
arm's length). I am very sure I shouldn't let you.

JUDITH. Don't you see that I can save you?

RICHARD. How? By changing clothes with me, eh?

JUDITH (disengaging her hand to touch his lips with it). Don't
(meaning "Don't jest"). No: by telling the Court who you really
are.

RICHARD (frowning). No use: they wouldn't spare me; and it would
spoil half of his chance of escaping. They are determined to cow
us by making an example of somebody on that gallows to-day. Well,
let us cow them by showing that we can stand by one another to
the death. That is the only force that can send Burgoyne back
across the Atlantic and make America a nation.

JUDITH (impatiently). Oh, what does all that matter?

RICHARD (laughing). True: what does it matter? what does anything
matter? You see, men have these strange notions, Mrs. Anderson;
and women see the folly of them.

JUDITH. Women have to lose those they love through them.

RICHARD. They can easily get fresh lovers.

JUDITH (revolted). Oh! (Vehemently) Do you realise that you are
going to kill yourself?

RICHARD. The only man I have any right to kill, Mrs. Anderson.
Don't be concerned: no woman will lose her lover through my
death. (Smiling) Bless you, nobody cares for me. Have you heard
that my mother is dead?

JUDITH. Dead!

RICHARD. Of heart disease--in the night. Her last word to me was
her curse: I don't think I could have borne her blessing. My
other relatives will not grieve much on my account. Essie will
cry for a day or two; but I have provided for her: I made my own
will last night.

JUDITH (stonily, after a moment's silence). And I!

RICHARD (surprised). You?

JUDITH. Yes, I. Am I not to care at all?

RICHARD (gaily and bluntly). Not a scrap. Oh, you expressed your
feelings towards me very frankly yesterday. What happened may
have softened you for the moment; but believe me, Mrs. Anderson,
you don't like a bone in my skin or a hair on my head. I shall be
as good a riddance at 12 today as I should have been at 12
yesterday.

JUDITH (her voice trembling). What can I do to show you that you
are mistaken?

RICHARD. Don't trouble. I'll give you credit for liking me a
little better than you did. All I say is that my death will not
break your heart.

JUDITH (almost in a whisper). How do you know? (She puts her
hands on his shoulders and looks intently at him.)

RICHARD (amazed--divining the truth). Mrs. Anderson!!! (The bell
of the town clock strikes the quarter. He collects himself, and
removes her hands, saying rather coldly) Excuse me: they will be
here for me presently. It is too late.

JUDITH. It is not too late. Call me as witness: they will never
kill you when they know how heroically you have acted.

RICHARD (with some scorn). Indeed! But if I don't go through with
it, where will the heroism be? I shall simply have tricked them;
and they'll hang me for that like a dog. Serve me right too!

JUDITH (wildly). Oh, I believe you WANT to die.

RICHARD (obstinately). No I don't.

JUDITH. Then why not try to save yourself? I implore you--listen.
You said just now that you saved him for my sake--yes (clutching
him as he recoils with a gesture of denial) a little for my sake.
Well, save yourself for my sake. And I will go with you to the
end of the world.

RICHARD (taking her by the wrists and holding her a little way
from him, looking steadily at her). Judith.

JUDITH (breathless--delighted at the name). Yes.

RICHARD. If I said--to please you--that I did what I did ever so
little for your sake, I lied as men always lie to women. You know
how much I have lived with worthless men--aye, and worthless
women too. Well, they could all rise to some sort of goodness and
kindness when they were in love. (The word love comes from him
with true Puritan scorn.) That has taught me to set very little
store by the goodness that only comes out red hot. What I did
last night, I did in cold blood, caring not half so much for your
husband, or (ruthlessly) for you (she droops, stricken) as I do
for myself. I had no motive and no interest: all I can tell you
is that when it came to the point whether I would take my neck
out of the noose and put another man's into it, I could not do
it. I don't know why not: I see myself as a fool for my pains;
but I could not and I cannot. I have been brought up standing by
the law of my own nature; and I may not go against it, gallows or
no gallows. (She has slowly raised her head and is now looking
full at him.) I should have done the same for any other man in
the town, or any other man's wife. (Releasing her.) Do you
understand that?

JUDITH. Yes: you mean that you do not love me.

RICHARD (revolted--with fierce contempt). Is that all it means to
you?

JUDITH. What more--what worse--can it mean to me?

(The sergeant knocks. The blow on the door jars on her heart.)
Oh, one moment more. (She throws herself on her knees.) I pray to
you--

RICHARD. Hush! (Calling) Come in. (The sergeant unlocks the door
and opens it. The guard is with him.)

SERGEANT (coming in). Time's up, sir.

RICHARD. Quite ready, Sergeant. Now, my dear. (He attempts to
raise her.)

JUDITH (clinging to him). Only one thing more--I entreat, I
implore you. Let me be present in the court. I have seen Major
Swindon: he said I should be allowed if you asked it. You will
ask it. It is my last request: I shall never ask you anything
again. (She clasps his knee.) I beg and pray it of you.

RICHARD. If I do, will you be silent?

JUDITH. Yes.

RICHARD. You will keep faith?

JUDITH. I will keep-- (She breaks down, sobbing.)

RICHARD (taking her arm to lift her). Just--her other arm,
Sergeant.

They go out, she sobbing convulsively, supported by the two men.

Meanwhile, the Council Chamber is ready for the court martial. It
is a large, lofty room, with a chair of state in the middle under
a tall canopy with a gilt crown, and maroon curtains with the
royal monogram G. R. In front of the chair is a table, also
draped in maroon, with a bell, a heavy inkstand, and writing
materials on it. Several chairs are set at the table. The door is
at the right hand of the occupant of the chair of state when it
has an occupant: at present it is empty. Major Swindon, a pale,
sandy-haired, very conscientious looking man of about 45, sits at
the end of the table with his back to the door, writing. He is
alone until the sergeant announces the General in a subdued
manner which suggests that Gentlemanly Johnny has been making his
presence felt rather heavily.

SERGEANT. The General, sir.

Swindon rises hastily. The General comes in, the sergeant goes
out. General Burgoyne is 55, and very well preserved. He is a man
of fashion, gallant enough to have made a distinguished marriage
by an elopement, witty enough to write successful comedies,
aristocratically-connected enough to have had opportunities of
high military distinction. His eyes, large, brilliant,
apprehensive, and intelligent, are his most remarkable feature:
without them his fine nose and small mouth would suggest rather
more fastidiousness and less force than go to the making of a
first rate general. Just now the eyes are angry and tragic, and
the mouth and nostrils tense.

BURGOYNE. Major Swindon, I presume.

SWINDON. Yes. General Burgoyne, if I mistake not. (They bow to
one another ceremoniously.) I am glad to have the support of your
presence this morning. It is not particularly lively business,
hanging this poor devil of a minister.

BURGOYNE (throwing himself onto Swindon's chair). No, sir, it is
not. It is making too much of the fellow to execute him: what
more could you have done if he had been a member of the Church of
England? Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the
only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
However, you have committed us to hanging him: and the sooner he
is hanged the better.

SWINDON. We have arranged it for 12 o'clock. Nothing remains to
be done except to try him.

BURGOYNE (looking at him with suppressed anger). Nothing--except
to save our own necks, perhaps. Have you heard the news from
Springtown?

SWINDON. Nothing special. The latest reports are satisfactory.

BURGOYNE (rising in amazement). Satisfactory, sir! Satisfactory!!
(He stares at him for a moment, and then adds, with grim
intensity) I am glad you take that view of them.

SWINDON (puzzled). Do I understand that in your opinion---

BURGOYNE. I do not express my opinion. I never stoop to that
habit of profane language which unfortunately coarsens our
profession. If I did, sir, perhaps I should be able to express my
opinion of the news from Springtown--the news which YOU
(severely) have apparently not heard. How soon do you get news
from your supports here?--in the course of a month eh?

SWINDON (turning sulky). I suppose the reports have been taken to
you, sir, instead of to me. Is there anything serious?

BURGOYNE (taking a report from his pocket and holding it up).
Springtown's in the hands of the rebels. (He throws the report on
the table.)

SWINDON (aghast). Since yesterday!

BURGOYNE. Since two o'clock this morning. Perhaps WE shall be in
their hands before two o'clock to-morrow morning. Have you
thought of that?

SWINDON (confidently). As to that, General, the British soldier
will give a good account of himself.

BURGOYNE (bitterly). And therefore, I suppose, sir, the British
officer need not know his business: the British soldier will get
him out of all his blunders with the bayonet. In future, sir, I
must ask you to be a little less generous with the blood of your
men, and a little more generous with your own brains.

SWINDON. I am sorry I cannot pretend to your intellectual
eminence, sir. I can only do my best, and rely on the devotion of
my countrymen.

BURGOYNE (suddenly becoming suavely sarcastic). May I ask are you
writing a melodrama, Major Swindon?

SWINDON (flushing). No, sir.

BURGOYNE. What a pity! WHAT a pity! (Dropping his sarcastic tone
and facing him suddenly and seriously) Do you at all realize,
sir, that we have nothing standing between us and destruction but
our own bluff and the sheepishness of these colonists? They are
men of the same English stock as ourselves: six to one of us
(repeating it emphatically), six to one, sir; and nearly half our
troops are Hessians, Brunswickers, German dragoons, and Indians
with scalping knives. These are the countrymen on whose devotion
you rely! Suppose the colonists find a leader! Suppose the news
from Springtown should turn out to mean that they have already
found a leader! What shall we do then? Eh?

SWINDON (sullenly). Our duty, sir, I presume.

BURGOYNE (again sarcastic--giving him up as a fool). Quite so,
quite so. Thank you, Major Swindon, thank you. Now you've settled
the question, sir--thrown a flood of light on the situation. What
a comfort to me to feel that I have at my side so devoted and
able an officer to support me in this emergency! I think, sir, it
will probably relieve both our feelings if we proceed to hang
this dissenter without further delay (he strikes the bell),
especially as I am debarred by my principles from the customary
military vent for my feelings. (The sergeant appears.) Bring your
man in.

SERGEANT. Yes, sir.

BURGOYNE. And mention to any officer you may meet that the court
cannot wait any longer for him.

SWINDON (keeping his temper with difficulty). The staff is
perfectly ready, sir. They have been waiting your convenience for
fully half an hour. PERFECTLY ready, sir.

BURGOYNE (blandly). So am I. (Several officers come in and take
their seats. One of them sits at the end of the table furthest
from the door, and acts throughout as clerk to the court,
making notes of the proceedings. The uniforms are those of
the 9th, 20th, 21st, 24th, 47th, 53rd, and 62nd British Infantry.
One officer is a Major General of the Royal Artillery. There
are also German officers of the Hessian Rifles, and of German
dragoon and Brunswicker regiments.) Oh, good morning, gentlemen.
Sorry to disturb you, I am sure. Very good of you to spare us a
few moments.

SWINDON. Will you preside, sir?

BURGOYNE (becoming additionally, polished, lofty, sarcastic
and urbane now that he is in public). No, sir: I feel my own
deficiencies too keenly to presume so far. If you will kindly
allow me, I will sit at the feet of Gamaliel. (He takes the
chair at the end of the table next the door, and motions Swindon
to the chair of state, waiting for him to be seated before
sitting himself.)

SWINDON (greatly annoyed). As you please, sir. I am only trying
to do my duty under excessively trying circumstances. (He takes
his place in the chair of state.)

Burgoyne, relaxing his studied demeanor for the moment, sits down
and begins to read the report with knitted brows and careworn
looks, reflecting on his desperate situation and Swindon's
uselessness. Richard is brought in. Judith walks beside him. Two
soldiers precede and two follow him, with the sergeant in
command. They cross the room to the wall opposite the door; but
when Richard has just passed before the chair of state the
sergeant stops him with a touch on the arm, and posts himself
behind him, at his elbow. Judith stands timidly at the wall. The
four soldiers place themselves in a squad near her.

BURGOYNE (looking up and seeing Judith). Who is that woman?

SERGEANT. Prisoner's wife, sir.

SWINDON (nervously). She begged me to allow her to be present;
and I thought--

BURGOYNE (completing the sentence for him ironically). You
thought it would be a pleasure for her. Quite so, quite so.
(Blandly) Give the lady a chair; and make her thoroughly
comfortable.

The sergeant fetches a chair and places it near Richard.

JUDITH. Thank you, sir. (She sits down after an awe-stricken
curtsy to Burgoyne, which he acknowledges by a dignified bend of
his head.)

SWINDON (to Richard, sharply). Your name, sir?

RICHARD (affable, but obstinate). Come: you don't mean to say
that you've brought me here without knowing who I am?

SWINDON. As a matter of form, sir, give your name.

RICHARD. As a matter of form then, my name is Anthony Anderson,
Presbyterian minister in this town.

BURGOYNE (interested). Indeed! Pray, Mr. Anderson, what do you
gentlemen believe?

RICHARD. I shall be happy to explain if time is allowed me. I
cannot undertake to complete your conversion in less than a
fortnight.

SWINDON (snubbing him). We are not here to discuss your views.

BURGOYNE (with an elaborate bow to the unfortunate Swindon). I
stand rebuked.

SWINDON (embarrassed). Oh, not you, I as--

BURGOYNE. Don't mention it. (To Richard, very politely) Any
political views, Mr. Anderson?

RICHARD. I understand that that is just what we are here to find
out.

SWINDON (severely). Do you mean to deny that you are a rebel?

RICHARD. I am an American, sir.

SWINDON. What do you expect me to think of that speech, Mr.
Anderson?

RICHARD. I never expect a soldier to think, sir.

Burgoyne is boundlessly delighted by this retort, which almost
reconciles him to the loss of America.

SWINDON (whitening with anger). I advise you not to be insolent,
prisoner.

RICHARD. You can't help yourself, General. When you make up your
mind to hang a man, you put yourself at a disadvantage with him.
Why should I be civil to you? I may as well be hanged for a sheep
as a lamb.

SWINDON. You have no right to assume that the court has made up
its mind without a fair trial. And you will please not address me
as General. I am Major Swindon.

RICHARD. A thousand pardons. I thought I had the honor of
addressing Gentlemanly Johnny.

Sensation among the officers. The sergeant has a narrow escape
from a guffaw.

BURGOYNE (with extreme suavity). I believe I am Gentlemanly
Johnny, sir, at your service. My more intimate friends call me
General Burgoyne. (Richard bows with perfect politeness.) You
will understand, sir, I hope, since you seem to be a gentleman
and a man of some spirit in spite of your calling, that if we
should have the misfortune to hang you, we shall do so as a mere
matter of political necessity and military duty, without any
personal ill-feeling.

RICHARD. Oh, quite so. That makes all the difference in the
world, of course.

They all smile in spite of themselves: and some of the younger
officers burst out laughing.

JUDITH (her dread and horror deepening at every one of these
jests and compliments). How CAN you?

RICHARD. You promised to be silent.

BURGOYNE (to Judith, with studied courtesy). Believe me, madam,
your husband is placing us under the greatest obligation by
taking this very disagreeable business so thoroughly in the
spirit of a gentleman. Sergeant: give Mr. Anderson a chair. (The
sergeant does so. Richard sits down.) Now, Major Swindon: we are
waiting for you.

SWINDON. You are aware, I presume, Mr. Anderson, of your
obligations as a subject of His Majesty King George the Third.

RICHARD. I am aware, sir, that His Majesty King George the Third
is about to hang me because I object to Lord North's robbing me.

SWINDON. That is a treasonable speech, sir.

RICHARD (briefly). Yes. I meant it to be.

BURGOYNE (strongly deprecating this line of defence, but still
polite). Don't you think, Mr. Anderson, that this is rather--if
you will excuse the word--a vulgar line to take? Why should you
cry out robbery because of a stamp duty and a tea duty and so
forth? After all, it is the essence of your position as a
gentleman that you pay with a good grace.

RICHARD. It is not the money, General. But to be swindled by a
pig-headed lunatic like King George.

SWINDON (scandalised). Chut, sir--silence!

SERGEANT (in stentorian tones, greatly shocked). Silence!

BURGOYNE (unruffled). Ah, that is another point of view. My
position does not allow of my going into that, except in private.
But (shrugging his shoulders) of course, Mr. Anderson, if you are
determined to be hanged (Judith flinches), there's nothing more
to be said. An unusual taste! however (with a final shrug)--!

SWINDON (to Burgoyne). Shall we call witnesses?

RICHARD. What need is there of witnesses? If the townspeople here
had listened to me, you would have found the streets barricaded,
the houses loopholed, and the people in arms to hold the town
against you to the last man. But you arrived, unfortunately,
before we had got out of the talking stage; and then it was too
late.

SWINDON (severely). Well, sir, we shall teach you and your
townspeople a lesson they will not forget. Have you anything more
to say?

RICHARD. I think you might have the decency to treat me as a
prisoner of war, and shoot me like a man instead of hanging me
like a dog.

BURGOYNE (sympathetically). Now there, Mr. Anderson, you talk
like a civilian, if you will excuse my saying so. Have you any
idea of the average marksmanship of the army of His Majesty King
George the Third? If we make you up a firing party, what will
happen? Half of them will miss you: the rest will make a mess of
the business and leave you to the provo-marshal's pistol. Whereas
we can hang you in a perfectly workmanlike and agreeable way.
(Kindly) Let me persuade you to be hanged, Mr. Anderson?

JUDITH (sick with horror). My God!

RICHARD (to Judith). Your promise! (To Burgoyne) Thank you,
General: that view of the case did not occur to me before. To
oblige you, I withdraw my objection to the rope. Hang me, by all
means.

BURGOYNE (smoothly). Will 12 o'clock suit you, Mr. Anderson?

RICHARD. I shall be at your disposal then, General.

BURGOYNE (rising). Nothing more to be said, gentlemen. (They all
rise.)

JUDITH (rushing to the table). Oh, you are not going to murder a
man like that, without a proper trial--without thinking of what
you are doing--without-- (She cannot find words.)

RICHARD. Is this how you keep your promise?

JUDITH. If I am not to speak, you must. Defend yourself: save
yourself: tell them the truth.

RICHARD (worriedly). I have told them truth enough to hang me ten
times over. If you say another word you will risk other lives;
but you will not save mine.

BURGOYNE. My good lady, our only desire is to save
unpleasantness. What satisfaction would it give you to have a
solemn fuss made, with my friend Swindon in a black cap and so
forth? I am sure we are greatly indebted to the admirable tact
and gentlemanly feeling shown by your husband.

JUDITH (throwing the words in his face). Oh, you are mad. Is it
nothing to you what wicked thing you do if only you do it like a
gentleman? Is it nothing to you whether you are a murderer or
not, if only you murder in a red coat? (Desperately) You shall
not hang him: that man is not my husband.

The officers look at one another, and whisper: some of the
Germans asking their neighbors to explain what the woman has
said. Burgoyne, who has been visibly shaken by Judith's reproach,
recovers himself promptly at this new development. Richard
meanwhile raises his voice above the buzz.

RICHARD. I appeal to you, gentlemen, to put an end to this. She
will not believe that she cannot save me. Break up the court.

BURGOYNE (in a voice so quiet and firm that it restores silence
at once). One moment, Mr. Anderson. One moment, gentlemen. (He
resumes his seat. Swindon and the officers follow his example.)
Let me understand you clearly, madam. Do you mean that this
gentleman is not your husband, or merely--I wish to put this with
all delicacy--that you are not his wife?

JUDITH. I don't know what you mean. I say that he is not my
husband--that my husband has escaped. This man took his place to
save him. Ask anyone in the town--send out into the street for
the first person you find there, and bring him in as a witness.
He will tell you that the prisoner is not Anthony Anderson.

BURGOYNE (quietly, as before). Sergeant.

SERGEANT. Yes sir.

BURGOYNE. Go out into the street and bring in the first townsman
you see there.

SERGEANT (making for the door). Yes sir.

BURGOYNE (as the sergeant passes). The first clean, sober
townsman you see.

SERGEANT. Yes Sir. (He goes out.)

BURGOYNE. Sit down, Mr. Anderson--if I may call you so for the
present. (Richard sits down.) Sit down, madam, whilst we wait.
Give the lady a newspaper.

RICHARD (indignantly). Shame!

BURGOYNE (keenly, with a half smile). If you are not her husband,
sir, the case is not a serious one--for her. (Richard bites his
lip silenced.)

JUDITH (to Richard, as she returns to her seat). I couldn't help
it. (He shakes his head. She sits down.)

BURGOYNE. You will understand of course, Mr. Anderson, that you
must not build on this little incident. We are bound to make an
example of somebody.

RICHARD. I quite understand. I suppose there's no use in my
explaining.

BURGOYNE. I think we should prefer independent testimony, if you
don't mind.

The sergeant, with a packet of papers in his hand, returns
conducting Christy, who is much scared.

SERGEANT (giving Burgoyne the packet). Dispatches, Sir. Delivered
by a corporal of the 53rd. Dead beat with hard riding, sir.

Burgoyne opens the dispatches, and presently becomes absorbed in
them. They are so serious as to take his attention completely
from the court martial.

SERGEANT (to Christy). Now then. Attention; and take your hat
off. (He posts himself in charge of Christy, who stands on
Burgoyne's side of the court.)

RICHARD (in his usual bullying tone to Christy). Don't be
frightened, you fool: you're only wanted as a witness. They're
not going to hang YOU.

SWINDON. What's your name?

CHRISTY. Christy.

RICHARD (impatiently). Christopher Dudgeon, you blatant idiot.
Give your full name.

SWINDON. Be silent, prisoner. You must not prompt the witness.

RICHARD. Very well. But I warn you you'll get nothing out of him
unless you shake it out of him. He has been too well brought up
by a pious mother to have any sense or manhood left in him.

BURGOYNE (springing up and speaking to the sergeant in a
startling voice). Where is the man who brought these?

SERGEANT. In the guard-room, sir.

Burgoyne goes out with a haste that sets the officers exchanging
looks.

SWINDON (to Christy). Do you know Anthony Anderson, the
Presbyterian minister?

CHRISTY. Of course I do. (Implying that Swindon must be an ass
not to know it.)

SWINDON. Is he here?

CHRISTY (staring round). I don't know.

SWINDON. Do you see him?

CHRISTY. No.

SWINDON. You seem to know the prisoner?

CHRISTY. Do you mean Dick?

SWINDON. Which is Dick?

CHRISTY (pointing to Richard). Him.

SWINDON. What is his name?

CHRISTY. Dick.

RICHARD. Answer properly, you jumping jackass. What do they know
about Dick?

CHRISTY. Well, you are Dick, ain't you? What am I to say?

SWINDON. Address me, sir; and do you, prisoner, be silent. Tell
us who the prisoner is.

CHRISTY. He's my brother Dudgeon.

SWINDON. Your brother!

CHRISTY. Yes.

SWINDON. You are sure he is not Anderson.

CHRISTY. Who?

RICHARD (exasperatedly). Me, me, me, you--

SWINDON. Silence, sir.

SERGEANT (shouting). Silence.

RICHARD (impatiently). Yah! (To Christy) He wants to know am I
Minister Anderson. Tell him, and stop grinning like a zany.

CHRISTY (grinning more than ever). YOU Pastor Anderson! (To
Swindon) Why, Mr. Anderson's a minister---a very good man; and
Dick's a bad character: the respectable people won't speak to
him. He's the bad brother: I'm the good one, (The officers laugh
outright. The soldiers grin.)

SWINDON. Who arrested this man?

SERGEANT. I did, sir. I found him in the minister's house,
sitting at tea with the lady with his coat off, quite at home. If
he isn't married to her, he ought to be.

SWINDON. Did he answer to the minister's name?

SERGEANT. Yes sir, but not to a minister's nature. You ask the
chaplain, sir.

SWINDON (to Richard, threateningly). So, sir, you have attempted
to cheat us. And your name is Richard Dudgeon?

RICHARD. You've found it out at last, have you?

SWINDON. Dudgeon is a name well known to us, eh?

RICHARD. Yes: Peter Dudgeon, whom you murdered, was my uncle.

SWINDON. Hm! (He compresses his lips and looks at Richard with
vindictive gravity.)

CHRISTY. Are they going to hang you, Dick?

RICHARD. Yes. Get out: they've done with you.

CHRISTY. And I may keep the china peacocks?

RICHARD (jumping up). Get out. Get out, you blithering baboon,
you. (Christy flies, panicstricken.)

SWINDON (rising--all rise). Since you have taken the minister's
place, Richard Dudgeon, you shall go through with it. The
execution will take place at 12 o'clock as arranged; and unless
Anderson surrenders before then you shall take his place on the
gallows. Sergeant: take your man out.

JUDITH (distracted). No, no--

SWINDON (fiercely, dreading a renewal of her entreaties). Take
that woman away.

RICHARD (springing across the table with a tiger-like bound, and
seizing Swindon by the throat). You infernal scoundrel.

The sergeant rushes to the rescue from one side, the soldiers
from the other. They seize Richard and drag him back to his
place. Swindon, who has been thrown supine on the table, rises,
arranging his stock. He is about to speak, when he is anticipated
by Burgoyne, who has just appeared at the door with two papers in
his hand: a white letter and a blue dispatch.

BURGOYNE (advancing to the table, elaborately cool). What is
this? What's happening? Mr. Anderson: I'm astonished at you.

RICHARD. I am sorry I disturbed you, General. I merely wanted to
strangle your understrapper there. (Breaking out violently at
Swindon) Why do you raise the devil in me by bullying the woman
like that? You oatmeal faced dog, I'd twist your cursed head off
with the greatest satisfaction. (He puts out his hands to the
sergeant) Here: handcuff me, will you; or I'll not undertake to
keep my fingers off him.

The sergeant takes out a pair of handcuffs and looks to Burgoyne
for instructions.

BURGOYNE. Have you addressed profane language to the lady, Major
Swindon?

SWINDON (very angry). No, sir, certainly not. That question
should not have been put to me. I ordered the woman to be
removed, as she was disorderly; and the fellow sprang at me. Put
away those handcuffs. I am perfectly able to take care of myself.

RICHARD. Now you talk like a man, I have no quarrel with you.

BURGOYNE. Mr. Anderson--

SWINDON. His name is Dudgeon, sir, Richard Dudgeon. He is an
impostor.

BURGOYNE (brusquely). Nonsense, sir; you hanged Dudgeon at
Springtown.

RICHARD. It was my uncle, General.

BURGOYNE. Oh, your uncle. (To Swindon, handsomely) I beg your
pardon, Major Swindon. (Swindon acknowledges the apology stiffly.
Burgoyne turns to Richard) We are somewhat unfortunate in our
relations with your family. Well, Mr. Dudgeon, what I wanted to
ask you is this: Who is (reading the name from the letter)
William Maindeck Parshotter?

RICHARD. He is the Mayor of Springtown.

BURGOYNE. Is William--Maindeck and so on--a man of his word?

RICHARD. Is he selling you anything?

BURGOYNE. No.

RICHARD. Then you may depend on him.

BURGOYNE. Thank you, Mr.--'m Dudgeon. By the way, since you are
not Mr. Anderson, do we still--eh, Major Swindon? (meaning "do we
still hang him?")

RICHARD. The arrangements are unaltered, General.

BURGOYNE. Ah, indeed. I am sorry. Good morning, Mr. Dudgeon. Good
morning, madam.

RICHARD (interrupting Judith almost fiercely as she is about to
make some wild appeal, and taking her arm resolutely). Not one
word more. Come.

She looks imploringly at him, but is overborne by his
determination. They are marched out by the four soldiers: the
sergeant, very sulky, walking between Swindon and Richard, whom
he watches as if he were a dangerous animal.

BURGOYNE. Gentlemen: we need not detain you. Major Swindon: a
word with you. (The officers go out. Burgoyne waits with
unruffled serenity until the last of them disappears. Then he
becomes very grave, and addresses Swindon for the first time
without his title.) Swindon: do you know what this is (showing
him the letter)?

SWINDON. What?

BURGOYNE. A demand for a safe-conduct for an officer of their
militia to come here and arrange terms with us.

SWINDON. Oh, they are giving in.

BURGOYNE. They add that they are sending the man who raised
Springtown last night and drove us out; so that we may know that
we are dealing with an officer of importance.

SWINDON. Pooh!

BURGOYNE. He will be fully empowered to arrange the terms
of--guess what.

SWINDON. Their surrender, I hope.

BURGOYNE. No: our evacuation of the town. They offer us just six
hours to clear out.

SWINDON. What monstrous impudence!

BURGOYNE. What shall we do, eh?

SWINDON. March on Springtown and strike a decisive blow at once.

BURGOYNE (quietly). Hm! (Turning to the door) Come to the
adjutant's office.

SWINDON. What for?

BURGOYNE. To write out that safe-conduct. (He puts his hand to
the door knob to open it.)

SWINDON (who has not budged). General Burgoyne.

BURGOYNE (returning). Sir?

SWINDON. It is my duty to tell you, sir, that I do not consider
the threats of a mob of rebellious tradesmen a sufficient reason
for our giving way.

BURGOYNE (imperturbable). Suppose I resign my command to you,
what will you do?

SWINDON. I will undertake to do what we have marched south from
Boston to do, and what General Howe has marched north from New
York to do: effect a junction at Albany and wipe out the rebel
army with our united forces.

BURGOYNE (enigmatically). And will you wipe out our enemies in
London, too?

SWINDON. In London! What enemies?

BURGOYNE (forcibly). Jobbery and snobbery, incompetence and Red
Tape. (He holds up the dispatch and adds, with despair in his
face and voice) I have just learnt, sir, that General Howe is
still in New York.

SWINDON (thunderstruck). Good God! He has disobeyed orders!

BURGOYNE (with sardonic calm). He has received no orders, sir.
Some gentleman in London forgot to dispatch them: he was leaving
town for his holiday, I believe. To avoid upsetting his
arrangements, England will lose her American colonies; and in a
few days you and I will be at Saratoga with 5,000 men to face
16,000 rebels in an impregnable position.

SWINDON (appalled). Impossible!

BURGOYNE (coldly). I beg your pardon!

SWINDON. I can't believe it! What will History say?

BURGOYNE. History, sir, will tell lies, as usual. Come: we must
send the safe-conduct. (He goes out.)

SWINDON (following distractedly). My God, my God! We shall be
wiped out.

As noon approaches there is excitement in the market place.
The gallows which hangs there permanently for the terror of
evildoers, with such minor advertizers and examples of crime as
the pillory, the whipping post, and the stocks, has a new rope
attached, with the noose hitched up to one of the uprights, out
of reach of the boys. Its ladder, too, has been brought out and
placed in position by the town beadle, who stands by to guard it
from unauthorized climbing. The Websterbridge townsfolk are
present in force, and in high spirits; for the news has spread
that it is the devil's disciple and not the minister that the
Continentals (so they call Burgoyne's forces) are about to hang:
consequently the execution can be enjoyed without any misgiving
as to its righteousness, or to the cowardice of allowing it to
take place without a struggle. There is even some fear of a
disappointment as midday approaches and the arrival of the beadle
with the ladder remains the only sign of preparation. But at last
reassuring shouts of Here they come: Here they are, are heard;
and a company of soldiers with fixed bayonets, half British
infantry, half Hessians, tramp quickly into the middle of the
market place, driving the crowd to the sides.

SERGEANT. Halt. Front. Dress. (The soldiers change their column
into a square enclosing the gallows, their petty officers,
energetically led by the sergeant, hustling the persons who find
themselves inside the square out at the corners.) Now then! Out
of it with you: out of it. Some o' you'll get strung up
yourselves presently. Form that square there, will you, you
damned Hoosians. No use talkin' German to them: talk to their
toes with the butt ends of your muskets: they'll understand that.
GET out of it, will you? (He comes upon Judith, standing near the
gallows.) Now then: YOU'VE no call here.

JUDITH. May I not stay? What harm am I doing?

SERGEANT. I want none of your argufying. You ought to be ashamed
of yourself, running to see a man hanged that's not your husband.
And he's no better than yourself. I told my major he was a
gentleman; and then he goes and tries to strangle him, and calls
his blessed Majesty a lunatic. So out of it with you, double
quick.

JUDITH. Will you take these two silver dollars and let me stay?

The sergeant, without an instant's hesitation, looks quickly and
furtively round as he shoots the money dexterously into his
pocket. Then he raises his voice in virtuous indignation.

SERGEANT. ME take money in the execution of my duty! Certainly
not. Now I'll tell you what I'll do, to teach you to corrupt the
King's officer. I'll put you under arrest until the execution's
over. You just stand there; and don't let me see you as much as
move from that spot until you're let. (With a swift wink at her
he points to the corner of the square behind the gallows on his
right, and turns noisily away, shouting) Now then dress up and
keep 'em back, will you?

Cries of Hush and Silence are heard among the townsfolk; and the
sound of a military band, playing the Dead March from Saul, is
heard. The crowd becomes quiet at once; and the sergeant and
petty officers, hurrying to the back of the square, with a few
whispered orders and some stealthy hustling cause it to open and
admit the funeral procession, which is protected from the crowd
by a double file of soldiers. First come Burgoyne and Swindon,
who, on entering the square, glance with distaste at the gallows,
and avoid passing under it by wheeling a little to the right and
stationing themselves on that side. Then Mr. Brudenell, the
chaplain, in his surplice, with his prayer book open in his hand,
walking beside Richard, who is moody and disorderly. He walks
doggedly through the gallows framework, and posts himself a
little in front of it. Behind him comes the executioner, a
stalwart soldier in his shirtsleeves. Following him, two soldiers
haul a light military waggon. Finally comes the band, which posts
itself at the back of the square, and finishes the Dead March.
Judith, watching Richard painfully, steals down to the gallows,
and stands leaning against its right post. During the
conversation which follows, the two soldiers place the cart under
the gallows, and stand by the shafts, which point backwards. The
executioner takes a set of steps from the cart and places it
ready for the prisoner to mount. Then he climbs the tall ladder
which stands against the gallows, and cuts the string by which
the rope is hitched up; so that the noose drops dangling over the
cart, into which he steps as he descends.

RICHARD (with suppressed impatience, to Brudenell). Look here,
sir: this is no place for a man of your profession. Hadn't you
better go away?

SWINDON. I appeal to you, prisoner, if you have any sense of
decency left, to listen to the ministrations of the chaplain, and
pay due heed to the solemnity of the occasion.

THE CHAPLAIN (gently reproving Richard). Try to control yourself,
and submit to the divine will. (He lifts his book to proceed with
the service.)

RICHARD. Answer for your own will, sir, and those of your
accomplices here (indicating Burgoyne and Swindon): I see little
divinity about them or you. You talk to me of Christianity when
you are in the act of hanging your enemies. Was there ever such
blasphemous nonsense! (To Swindon, more rudely) You've got up the
solemnity of the occasion, as you call it, to impress the people
with your own dignity--Handel's music and a clergyman to make
murder look like piety! Do you suppose I am going to help you?
You've asked me to choose the rope because you don't know your
own trade well enough to shoot me properly. Well, hang away and
have done with it.

SWINDON (to the chaplain). Can you do nothing with him, Mr.
Brudenell?

CHAPLAIN. I will try, sir. (Beginning to read) Man that is born
of woman hath--

RICHARD (fixing his eyes on him). "Thou shalt not kill."

The book drops in Brudenell's hands.

CHAPLAIN (confessing his embarrassment). What am I to say, Mr.
Dudgeon?

RICHARD. Let me alone, man, can't you?

BURGOYNE (with extreme urbanity). I think, Mr. Brudenell, that as
the usual professional observations seem to strike Mr. Dudgeon as
incongruous under the circumstances, you had better omit them
until--er--until Mr. Dudgeon can no longer be inconvenienced by
them. (Brudenell, with a shrug, shuts his book and retires behind
the gallows.) YOU seem in a hurry, Mr. Dudgeon.

RICHARD (with the horror of death upon him). Do you think this is
a pleasant sort of thing to be kept waiting for? You've made up
your mind to commit murder: well, do it and have done with it.

BURGOYNE. Mr. Dudgeon: we are only doing this--

RICHARD. Because you're paid to do it.

SWINDON. You insolent-- (He swallows his rage.)

BURGOYNE (with much charm of manner). Ah, I am really sorry that
you should think that, Mr. Dudgeon. If you knew what my
commission cost me, and what my pay is, you would think better of
me. I should be glad to part from you on friendly terms.

RICHARD. Hark ye, General Burgoyne. If you think that I like
being hanged, you're mistaken. I don't like it; and I don't mean
to pretend that I do. And if you think I'm obliged to you for
hanging me in a gentlemanly way, you're wrong there too. I take
the whole business in devilish bad part; and the only
satisfaction I have in it is that you'll feel a good deal meaner
than I'll look when it's over. (He turns away, and is striding to
the cart when Judith advances and interposes with her arms
stretched out to him. Richard, feeling that a very little will
upset his self-possession, shrinks from her, crying) What are you
doing here? This is no place for you. (She makes a gesture as if
to touch him. He recoils impatiently.) No: go away, go away;
you'll unnerve me. Take her away, will you?

JUDITH. Won't you bid me good-bye?

RICHARD (allowing her to take his hand). Oh good-bye, good-bye.
Now go--go--quickly. (She clings to his hand--will not be put off
with so cold a last farewell--at last, as he tries to disengage
himself, throws herself on his breast in agony.)

SWINDON (angrily to the sergeant, who, alarmed at Judith's
movement, has come from the back of the square to pull her back,
and stopped irresolutely on finding that he is too late). How is
this? Why is she inside the lines?

SERGEANT (guiltily). I dunno, sir. She's that artful can't keep
her away.

BURGOYNE. You were bribed.

SERGEANT (protesting). No, Sir--

SWINDON (severely). Fall back. (He obeys.)

RICHARD (imploringly to those around him, and finally to
Burgoyne, as the least stolid of them). Take her away. Do you
think I want a woman near me now?

BURGOYNE (going to Judith and taking her hand). Here, madam: you
had better keep inside the lines; but stand here behind us; and
don't look.

Richard, with a great sobbing sigh of relief as she releases him
and turns to Burgoyne, flies for refuge to the cart and mounts
into it. The executioner takes off his coat and pinions him.

JUDITH (resisting Burgoyne quietly and drawing her hand
away). No: I must stay. I won't look. (She goes to the
right of the gallows. She tries to look at Richard, but turns
away with a frightful shudder, and falls on her knees in prayer.
Brudenell comes towards her from the back of the square.)

BURGOYNE (nodding approvingly as she kneels). Ah, quite so. Do
not disturb her, Mr. Brudenell: that will do very nicely.
(Brudenell nods also, and withdraws a little, watching her
sympathetically. Burgoyne resumes his former position, and takes
out a handsome gold chronometer.) Now then, are those
preparations made? We must not detain Mr. Dudgeon.

By this time Richard's hands are bound behind him; and the noose
is round his neck. The two soldiers take the shaft of the wagon,
ready to pull it away. The executioner, standing in the cart
behind Richard, makes a sign to the sergeant.

SERGEANT (to Burgoyne). Ready, sir.

BURGOYNE. Have you anything more to say, Mr. Dudgeon? It wants
two minutes of twelve still.

RICHARD (in the strong voice of a man who has conquered the
bitterness of death). Your watch is two minutes slow by the town
clock, which I can see from here, General. (The town clock
strikes the first stroke of twelve. Involuntarily the people
flinch at the sound, and a subdued groan breaks from them.) Amen!
my life for the world's future!

ANDERSON (shouting as he rushes into the market place). Amen; and
stop the execution. (He bursts through the line of soldiers
opposite Burgoyne, and rushes, panting, to the gallows.) I am
Anthony Anderson, the man you want.

The crowd, intensely excited, listens with all its ears. Judith,
half rising, stares at him; then lifts her hands like one whose
dearest prayer has been granted.

SWINDON. Indeed. Then you are just in time to take your place on
the gallows. Arrest him.

At a sign from the sergeant, two soldiers come forward to seize
Anderson.

ANDERSON (thrusting a paper under Swindon's nose). There's my
safe-conduct, sir.

SWINDON (taken aback). Safe-conduct! Are you--!

ANDERSON (emphatically). I am. (The two soldiers take him by the
elbows.) Tell these men to take their hands off me.

SWINDON (to the men). Let him go.

SERGEANT. Fall back.

The two men return to their places. The townsfolk raise a cheer;
and begin to exchange exultant looks, with a presentiment of
triumph as they see their Pastor speaking with their enemies in
the gate.

ANDERSON (exhaling a deep breath of relief, and dabbing his
perspiring brow with his handkerchief). Thank God, I was in time!

BURGOYNE (calm as ever, and still watch in hand). Ample time,
sir. Plenty of time. I should never dream of hanging any
gentleman by an American clock. (He puts up his watch.)

ANDERSON. Yes: we are some minutes ahead of you already, General.
Now tell them to take the rope from the neck of that American
citizen.

BURGOYNE (to the executioner in the cart--very politely). Kindly
undo Mr. Dudgeon.

The executioner takes the rope from Richard's neck, unties has
hands, and helps him on with his coat.

JUDITH (stealing timidly to Anderson). Tony.

ANDERSON (putting his arm round her shoulders and bantering her
affectionately). Well what do you think of you husband, NOW,
eh?--eh??--eh???

JUDITH. I am ashamed-- (She hides her face against his breast.)

BURGOYNE (to Swindon). You look disappointed, Major Swindon.

SWINDON. You look defeated, General Burgoyne.

BURGOYNE. I am, sir; and I am humane enough to be glad
of it. (Richard jumps down from the cart, Brudenell offering his
hand to help him, and runs to Anderson, whose left hand he shakes
heartily, the right being occupied by Judith.) By the way, Mr.
Anderson, I do not quite understand. The safe-conduct was for a
commander of the militia. I understand you are a--(he looks as
pointedly as his good manners permit at the riding boots, the
pistols, and Richard's coat, and adds) a clergyman.

ANDERSON (between Judith and Richard). Sir: it is in the hour of
trial that a man finds his true profession. This foolish young
man (placing his hand on Richard's shoulder) boasted himself the
Devil's Disciple; but when the hour of trial came to him, he
found that it was his destiny to suffer and be faithful to the
death. I thought myself a decent minister of the gospel of peace;
but when the hour of trial came to me, I found that it was my
destiny to be a man of action and that my place was amid the
thunder of the captains and the shouting. So I am starting life
at fifty as Captain Anthony Anderson of the Springtown militia;
and the Devil's Disciple here will start presently as the
Reverend Richard Dudgeon, and wag his pow in my old pulpit, and
give good advice to this silly sentimental little wife of mine
(putting his other hand on her shoulder. She steals a glance at
Richard to see how the prospect pleases him). Your mother told
me, Richard, that I should never have chosen Judith if I'd been
born for the ministry. I am afraid she was right; so, by your
leave, you may keep my coat and I'll keep yours.

RICHARD. Minister--I should say Captain. I have behaved like a
fool.

JUDITH. Like a hero.

RICHARD. Much the same thing, perhaps. (With some bitterness
towards himself) But no: if I had been any good, I should have
done for you what you did for me, instead of making a vain
sacrifice.

ANDERSON. Not vain, my boy. It takes all sorts to make a world
--saints as well as soldiers. (Turning to Burgoyne) And now,
General, time presses; and America is in a hurry. Have you
realized that though you may occupy towns and win battles, you
cannot conquer a nation?

BURGOYNE. My good sir, without a Conquest you cannot have an
aristocracy. Come and settle the matter at my quarters.

ANDERSON. At your service, sir. (To Richard) See Judith home for
me, will you, my boy? (He hands her over to him.) Now General.
(He goes busily up the market place towards the Town Hall,
Leaving Judith and Richard together. Burgoyne follows him a step
or two; then checks himself and turns to Richard.)

BURGOYNE. Oh, by the way, Mr. Dudgeon, I shall be glad to see you
at lunch at half-past one. (He pauses a moment, and adds, with
politely veiled slyness) Bring Mrs. Anderson, if she will be so
good. (To Swindon, who is fuming) Take it quietly, Major Swindon:
your friend the British soldier can stand up to anything except
the British War Office. (He follows Anderson.)

SERGEANT (to Swindon). What orders, sir?

SWINDON (savagely). Orders! What use are orders now? There's no
army. Back to quarters; and be d-- (He turns on his heel and
goes.)

SERGEANT (pugnacious and patriotic, repudiating the idea of
defeat). 'Tention. Now then: cock up your chins, and show 'em you
don't care a damn for 'em. Slope arms! Fours! Wheel! Quick march!

The drum marks time with a tremendous bang; the band strikes up
British Grenadiers; and the sergeant, Brudenell, and the English
troops march off defiantly to their quarters. The townsfolk press
in behind, and follow them up the market, jeering at them; and
the town band, a very primitive affair, brings up the rear,
playing Yankee Doodle. Essie, who comes in with them, runs to
Richard.

ESSIE. Oh, Dick!

RICHARD (good-humoredly, but wilfully). Now, now: come, come! I
don't mind being hanged; but I will not be cried over.

ESSIE. No, I promise. I'll be good. (She tries to restrain her
tears, but cannot.) I--I want to see where the soldiers are going
to. (She goes a little way up the market, pretending to look
after the crowd.)

JUDITH. Promise me you will never tell him.

RICHARD. Don't be afraid.

They shake hands on it.

ESSIE (calling to them). They're coming back. They want you.

Jubilation in the market. The townsfolk surge back again in wild
enthusiasm with their band, and hoist Richard on their shoulders,
cheering him.

CURTAIN.



NOTES TO THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE

BURGOYNE

General John Burgoyne, who is presented in this play for the
first time (as far as I am aware) on the English stage, is not a
conventional stage soldier, but as faithful a portrait as it is
in the nature of stage portraits to be. His objection to profane
swearing is not borrowed from Mr. Gilbert's H. M. S. Pinafore: it
is taken from the Code of Instructions drawn up by himself for
his officers when he introduced Light Horse into the English
army. His opinion that English soldiers should be treated as
thinking beings was no doubt as unwelcome to the military
authorities of his time, when nothing was thought of ordering a
soldier a thousand lashes, as it will be to those modern victims
of the flagellation neurosis who are so anxious to revive that
discredited sport. His military reports are very clever as
criticisms, and are humane and enlightened within certain
aristocratic limits, best illustrated perhaps by his declaration,
which now sounds so curious, that he should blush to ask for
promotion on any other ground than that of family influence. As a
parliamentary candidate, Burgoyne took our common expression
"fighting an election" so very literally that he led his
supporters to the poll at Preston in 1768 with a loaded pistol in
each hand, and won the seat, though he was fined 1,000 pounds,
and denounced by Junius, for the pistols.

It is only within quite recent years that any general recognition
has become possible for the feeling that led Burgoyne, a
professed enemy of oppression in India and elsewhere, to accept
his American command when so many other officers threw up their
commissions rather than serve in a civil war against the
Colonies. His biographer De Fonblanque, writing in 1876,
evidently regarded his position as indefensible. Nowadays, it is
sufficient to say that Burgoyne was an Imperialist. He
sympathized with the colonists; but when they proposed as a
remedy the disruption of the Empire, he regarded that as a step
backward in civilization. As he put it to the House of Commons,
"while we remember that we are contending against brothers and
fellow subjects, we must also remember that we are contending in
this crisis for the fate of the British Empire." Eighty-four
years after his defeat, his republican conquerors themselves
engaged in a civil war for the integrity of their Union. In 1886
the Whigs who represented the anti-Burgoyne tradition of American
Independence in English politics, abandoned Gladstone and made
common cause with their political opponents in defence of the
Union between England and Ireland. Only the other day England
sent 200,000 men into the field south of the equator to fight out
the question whether South Africa should develop as a Federation
of British Colonies or as an independent Afrikander United
States. In all these cases the Unionists who were detached from
their parties were called renegades, as Burgoyne was. That, of
course, is only one of the unfortunate consequences of the fact
that mankind, being for the most part incapable of politics,
accepts vituperation as an easy and congenial substitute. Whether
Burgoyne or Washington, Lincoln or Davis, Gladstone or Bright,
Mr. Chamberlain or Mr. Leonard Courtney was in the right will
never be settled, because it will never be possible to prove that
the government of the victor has been better for mankind than the
government of the vanquished would have been. It is true that the
victors have no doubt on the point; but to the dramatist, that
certainty of theirs is only part of the human comedy. The
American Unionist is often a Separatist as to Ireland; the
English Unionist often sympathizes with the Polish Home Ruler;
and both English and American Unionists are apt to be
Disruptionists as regards that Imperial Ancient of Days, the
Empire of China. Both are Unionists concerning Canada, but with a
difference as to the precise application to it of the Monroe
doctrine. As for me, the dramatist, I smile, and lead the
conversation back to Burgoyne.

Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga made him that occasionally
necessary part of our British system, a scapegoat. The
explanation of his defeat given in the play is founded on a
passage quoted by De Fonblanque from Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord
Shelburne, as follows: "Lord George Germain, having among other
peculiarities a particular dislike to be put out of his way on
any occasion, had arranged to call at his office on his way to
the country to sign the dispatches; but as those addressed to
Howe had not been faircopied, and he was not disposed to be
balked of his projected visit to Kent, they were not signed then
and were forgotten on his return home." These were the dispatches
instructing Sir William Howe, who was in New York, to effect a
junction at Albany with Burgoyne, who had marched from Boston for
that purpose. Burgoyne got as far as Saratoga, where, failing the
expected reinforcement, he was hopelessly outnumbered, and his
officers picked off, Boer fashion, by the American
farmer-sharpshooters. His own collar was pierced by a bullet. The
publicity of his defeat, however, was more than compensated at
home by the fact that Lord George's trip to Kent had not been
interfered with, and that nobody knew about the oversight of the
dispatch. The policy of the English Government and Court for the
next two years was simply concealment of Germain's neglect.
Burgoyne's demand for an inquiry was defeated in the House of
Commons by the court party; and when he at last obtained a
committee, the king got rid of it by a prorogation. When Burgoyne
realized what had happened about the instructions to Howe (the
scene in which I have represented him as learning it before
Saratoga is not historical: the truth did not dawn on him until
many months afterwards) the king actually took advantage of his
being a prisoner of war in England on parole, and ordered him to
return to America into captivity. Burgoyne immediately resigned
all his appointments; and this practically closed his military
career, though he was afterwards made Commander of the Forces in
Ireland for the purpose of banishing him from parliament.

The episode illustrates the curious perversion of the English
sense of honor when the privileges and prestige of the
aristocracy are at stake. Mr. Frank Harris said, after the
disastrous battle of Modder River, that the English, having lost
America a century ago because they preferred George III, were
quite prepared to lose South Africa to-day because they preferred
aristocratic commanders to successful ones. Horace Walpole, when
the parliamentary recess came at a critical period of the War of
Independence, said that the Lords could not be expected to lose
their pheasant shooting for the sake of America. In the working
class, which, like all classes, has its own official aristocracy,
there is the same reluctance to discredit an institution or to
"do a man out of his job." At bottom, of course, this apparently
shameless sacrifice of great public interests to petty personal
ones, is simply the preference of the ordinary man for the things
he can feel and understand to the things that are beyond his
capacity. It is stupidity, not dishonesty.

Burgoyne fell a victim to this stupidity in two ways. Not only
was he thrown over, in spite of his high character and
distinguished services, to screen a court favorite who had
actually been cashiered for cowardice and misconduct in the field
fifteen years before; but his peculiar critical temperament and
talent, artistic, satirical, rather histrionic, and his
fastidious delicacy of sentiment, his fine spirit and humanity,
were just the qualities to make him disliked by stupid people
because of their dread of ironic criticism. Long after his death,
Thackeray, who had an intense sense of human character, but was
typically stupid in valuing and interpreting it, instinctively
sneered at him and exulted in his defeat. That sneer represents
the common English attitude towards the Burgoyne type. Every
instance in which the critical genius is defeated, and the stupid
genius (for both temperaments have their genius) "muddles through
all right," is popular in England. But Burgoyne's failure was not
the work of his own temperament, but of the stupid temperament.
What man could do under the circumstances he did, and did
handsomely and loftily. He fell, and his ideal empire was
dismembered, not through his own misconduct, but because Sir
George Germain overestimated the importance of his Kentish
holiday, and underestimated the difficulty of conquering those
remote and inferior creatures, the colonists. And King George and
the rest of the nation agreed, on the whole, with Germain. It is
a significant point that in America, where Burgoyne was an enemy
and an invader, he was admired and praised. The climate there is
no doubt more favorable to intellectual vivacity.

I have described Burgoyne's temperament as rather histrionic; and
the reader will have observed that the Burgoyne of the Devil's
Disciple is a man who plays his part in life, and makes all its
points, in the manner of a born high comedian. If he had been
killed at Saratoga, with all his comedies unwritten, and his plan
for turning As You Like It into a Beggar's Opera unconceived, I
should still have painted the same picture of him on the strength
of his reply to the articles of capitulation proposed to him by
his American conqueror General Gates. Here they are:

PROPOSITION.

1. General Burgoyne's army being reduced by repeated defeats, by
desertion, sickness, etc., their provisions exhausted, their
military horses, tents and baggage taken or destroyed, their
retreat cut off, and their camp invested, they can only be
allowed to surrender as prisoners of war.

ANSWER.

1. Lieut.-General Burgoyne's army, however reduced, will never
admit that their retreat is cut off while they have arms in
their hands.

PROPOSITION.

2. The officers and soldiers may keep the baggage belonging to
them. The generals of the United States never permit
individuals to be pillaged.

ANSWER.

2. Noted.

PROPOSITION.

3. The troops under his Excellency General Burgoyne will be
conducted by the most convenient route to New England,
marching by easy marches, and sufficiently provided for by the
way.

ANSWER.

3. Agreed.

PROPOSITION.

4. The officers will be admitted on parole and will be treated
with the liberality customary in such cases, so long as they,
by proper behaviour, continue to deserve it; but those who are
apprehended having broke their parole, as some British
officers have done, must expect to be close confined.

ANSWER.

4. There being no officer in this army, under, or capable of
being under, the description of breaking parole, this article
needs no answer.

PROPOSITION.

5. All public stores, artillery, arms, ammunition, carriages,
horses, etc., etc., must be delivered to commissaries appointed
to receive them.

ANSWER.

5. All public stores may be delivered, arms excepted.

PROPOSITION.

6. These terms being agreed to and signed, the troops under his
Excellency's, General Burgoyne's command, may be drawn up in
their encampments, where they will be ordered to ground their
arms, and may thereupon be marched to the river-side on their
way to Bennington.

ANSWER.

6. This article is inadmissible in any extremity. Sooner than
this army will consent to ground their arms in their
encampments, they will rush on the enemy determined to take no
quarter.


And, later on, "If General Gates does not mean to recede from the
6th article, the treaty ends at once: the army will to a man
proceed to any act of desperation sooner than submit to that
article."

Here you have the man at his Burgoynest. Need I add that he had
his own way; and that when the actual ceremony of surrender came,
he would have played poor General Gates off the stage, had not
that commander risen to the occasion by handing him back his
sword.

In connection with the reference to Indians with scalping knives,
who, with the troops hired from Germany, made up about half
Burgoyne's force, I may mention that Burgoyne offered two of them
a reward to guide a Miss McCrea, betrothed to one of the English
officers, into the English lines.

The two braves quarrelled about the reward; and the more
sensitive of them, as a protest against the unfairness of the
other, tomahawked the young lady. The usual retaliations were
proposed under the popular titles of justice and so forth; but as
the tribe of the slayer would certainly have followed suit by a
massacre of whites on the Canadian frontier, Burgoyne was
compelled to forgive the crime, to the intense disgust of
indignant Christendom.

BRUDENELL

Brudenell is also a real person. At least an artillery chaplain
of that name distinguished himself at Saratoga by reading the
burial service over Major Fraser under fire, and by a quite
readable adventure, chronicled by Burgoyne, with Lady Harriet
Ackland. Lady Harriet's husband achieved the remarkable feat of
killing himself, instead of his adversary, in a duel. He
overbalanced himself in the heat of his swordsmanship, and fell
with his head against a pebble. Lady Harriet then married the
warrior chaplain, who, like Anthony Anderson in the play, seems
to have mistaken his natural profession.

The rest of the Devil's Disciple may have actually occurred, like
most stories invented by dramatists; but I cannot produce any
documents. Major Swindon's name is invented; but the man, of
course, is real. There are dozens of him extant to this day.





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Devil's Disciple, by Bernard Shaw

