A Comedy By J M Barrie - Part 1

A Story That I read that I want to share with you all.

AT LOAM HOUSE, MAYFAIR

A moment before the curtain rises, the Hon. Ernest
Woolley drives up to the door of Loam House in Mayfair.
There is a happy smile on his pleasant, insignificant face,
and this presumably means that he is thinking of himself.
He is too busy over nothing, this man about town, to be
always thinking of himself, but, on the other hand, he
almost never thinks of any other person. Probably
Ernest's great moment is when he wakes of a morning
and realises that he really is Ernest, for we must all wish
to be that which is our ideal. We can conceive him
springing out of bed light-heartedly and waiting for his
man to do the rest. He is dressed in excellent taste, with
just the little bit more which shows that he is not without
a sense of humour: the dandiacal are often saved by
carrying a smile at the whole thing in their spats, let us say.

Ernest left Cambridge the other day, a member of The
Athenaeum (which he would be sorry to have you confound
with a club in London of the same name). He is a bachelor,
but not of arts, no mean epigrammatist (as you shall see),
and a favourite of the ladies. He is almost a celebrity in
restaurants, where he dines frequently, returning to sup;
and during this last year he has probably paid as much in
them for the privilege of handing his hat to an attendant
as the rent of a working-man's flat. He complains brightly
that he is hard up, and that if somebody or other at
Westminster does not look out the country will go to the dogs.

He is no fool. He has the shrewdness to float with the
current because it is a labour-saving process, but he has
sufficient pluck to fight, if fight he must (a brief contest,
for he would soon be toppled over). He has a light nature,
which would enable him to bob up cheerily in new conditions
and return unaltered to the old ones. His selfishness is his
most endearing quality. If he has his way he will spend his
life like a cat in pushing his betters out of the soft places, and until
he is old he will be fondled in the process.


He gives his hat to one footman and his cane to another,
and mounts the great staircase unassisted and undirected.
As a nephew of the house he need show no credentials
even to Crichton, who is guarding a door above. It would
not be good taste to describe Crichton, who is only a servant;
if to the scandal of all good houses he is to stand out as a
figure in the play, he must do it on his own, as they say in the
pantry and the boudoir. We are not going to help him. We have
had misgivings ever since we found his name in the title, and we shall
keep him out of his rights as long as we can. Even though
we softened to him he would not be a hero in these clothes
of servitude; and he loves his clothes. How to get him out of them?

It would require a cataclysm. To be an indoor servant at
all is to Crichton a badge of honour; to be a butler at thirty
is the realisation of his proudest ambitions. He is devotedly
attached to his master, who, in his opinion, has but one fault,
he is not sufficiently contemptuous of his inferiors. We are
immediately to be introduced to this solitary failing of a great
English peer. This perfect butler, then, opens a door, and
ushers Ernest  into a certain room. At the same moment the
curtain rises on this room, and the play begins.

It is one of several reception-rooms in Loam House, not
the most magnificent but quite the softest; and of a warm
afternoon all that those who are anybody crave for is the
softest. The larger rooms are magnificent and bare, carpetless,
so that it is an accomplishment to keep one's feet on them;
they are sometimes lent for charitable purposes; they are also
all in use on the night of a dinner-party, when you may find
yourself alone in one, having taken a wrong turning; or alone,
save for two others who are within hailing distance.

This room, however, is comparatively small and very soft. There
are so many cushions in it that you wonder why, if you are an
outsider and don't know that, it needs six cushions to make one fair
head comfy. The couches themselves are cushions as large as
beds, and there is an art of sinking into them and of waiting to be
helped out of them. There are several famous paintings on the
walls, of which you may say 'Jolly thing that,' without losing caste
as knowing too much; and in cases there are glorious miniatures,
but the daughters of the house cannot tell you of whom; 'there is
a catalogue somewhere.' There are a thousand or so of roses in basins,
several library novels, and a row of weekly illustrated newspapers
lying against each other like fallen soldiers.

If any one disturbs this row Crichton seems to know of it from afar
and appears noiselessly and replaces the wanderer. One thing
unexpected in such a room is a great array of tea things. Ernest spots
them with a twinkle, and has his epigram at once unsheathed. He dallies,
however, before delivering the thrust.

ERNEST : I perceive, from the tea cups, Crichton, that the great
function is to take place here.

CRICHTON : (with a respectful sigh). Yes, sir.


ERNEST : (chuckling heartlessly). The servants' hall coming up
to have tea in the drawing-room! (With terrible sarcasm.)
No wonder you look happy, Crichton.

CRICHTON : (under the knife). No, sir.

ERNEST : Do you know, Crichton, I think that with an effort
you might look even happier. (CRICHTON smiles wanly.)
You don't approve of his lordship's compelling his servants to
be his equals--once a month?

CRICHTON : It is not for me, sir, to disapprove of his lordship's
radical views.

ERNEST : Certainly not. And, after all, it is only once a month
that he is affable to you.

CRICHTON : On all other days of the month, sir, his lordship's
treatment of us is everything that could be desired.

ERNEST : (This is the epigram.) Tea cups! Life, Crichton, is
like a cup of tea; the more heartily we drink, the sooner we
reach the dregs.

CRICHTON : (obediently). Thank you, sir.

ERNEST : (becoming confidential, as we do when we have
need of an ally). Crichton, in case I should be asked to say
a few words to the servants, I have strung together a little
speech. (His hand strays to his pocket.) I was wondering
where I should stand.

(He tries various places and postures, and comes to rest
leaning over a high chair, whence, in dumb show, he
addresses a gathering. CRICHTON, with the best intentions,
gives him a footstool to stand on, and departs, happily
unconscious that ERNEST in some dudgeon has kicked the
footstool across the room.)

ERNEST : (addressing an imaginary audience, and desirous
of startling them at once). Suppose you were all
little fishes at the bottom of the sea--

(He is not quite satisfied with his position, though sure that
the fault must lie with the chair for being too high, not with
him for being too short. CRICHTON'S suggestion was not
perhaps a bad one after all. He lifts the stool, but hastily
conceals it behind him on the entrance of the LADIES
CATHERINE and AGATHA, two daughters of the house.
CATHERINE is twenty, and AGATHA two years younger.
They are very fashionable young women indeed, who might
wake up for a dance, but they are very lazy, CATHERINE
being two years lazier than AGATHA.)

ERNEST : (uneasily jocular, because he is concealing the
footstool). And how are my little friends to-day?

AGATHA : (contriving to reach a settee). Don't be silly,
Ernest. If you want to know how we are, we are dead.
Even to think of entertaining the servants is so exhausting.

CATHERINE : (subsiding nearer the door). Besides which,
we have had to decide what frocks to take with us
on the yacht, and that is such a mental strain.

ERNEST : You poor over-worked things.
(Evidently AGATHA is his favourite, for he helps her to put
her feet in the settee, while CATHERINE has to dispose of
her own feet.) Rest your weary limbs.

CATHERINE : (perhaps in revenge). But why have you a
footstool in your hand?

AGATHA : Yes?


Will be Continue......

Wait for it...

In February 5...