SCENE I
The Sunday following the last scene. The porch of Grunstom Church. The HEMSTOCKS have attended the post-funeral service. Mourners are leaving the church.
1ST MOURNER: Well, I niver knowed the likes —
2ND MOURNER: What?
1ST MOURNER: Nurse Broadbanks to be axed wi’ old Hezekiah Wilcox, an’ Job Arthur Bowers wi’ Rachel Wilcox.
3RD MOURNER: An’ what about it?
1ST MOURNER: Well, I never thought Nurse would have him an’ everybody said Job Arthur would never marry now.
2ND MOURNER: I’m not surprised at neither of ‘em.
1ST MOURNER: I was never more taken in in my life.
Exit 1ST and 2ND MOURNERS.
SUSY: No.
3RD MOURNER: I don’t call it decent — two sets of banns put up at a funeral Sunday. They might ha’ waited till next week.
SUSY: I’m going to see about this.
3RD MOURNER: Yes, th’ old Baron wants telling, the old nuisance, for he’s nothing else.
Exit SUSY and 3RD MOURNER.
4TH MOURNER (sighing): That did me good. I’m sure I’ve fair cried my eyes up.
5TH MOURNER: You can’t make out half the old Baron says, but he makes you feel funny.
4TH MOURNER: As if you’d got ghosts in your bowels. An’ when he said — what was it?
5TH MOURNER: Was it Hezekiah Wilcox wi’ Nurse Broadbanks?
4TH MOURNER: Yes — fancy ’em both bein’ there to hear it. What a come-down for her.
5TH MOURNER: I dunno. The old chap’s tidy well off —
4TH MOURNER: But he’s mushy — he slavers like a slobbering spaniel —
5TH MOURNER: Well, women like that sort.
Exit 4TH and 5TH MOURNERS.
MR HEMSTOCK: I allers thought ‘er’d a worn widow’s weeds for me —
HARRY: Dost wish it wor that road about?
MR HEMSTOCK: Nay, I non know —
HARRY: Are ter stoppin’?
MR HEMSTOCK: I want ter speak ter Nurse.
HARRY: I’m goin’ then.
MR HEMSTOCK: Dunna thee — tha wait a bit.
HARRY: Nay.
Exit HARRY.
BAKER (in very genteel black): Good morning, Mr Hemstock.
MR HEMSTOCK: Good morning.
BAKER: We got more than we bargained for.
MR HEMSTOCK: Yes, a bit surprisin’.
BAKER: I’m going to strike — Nurse for a mother-in-law is too much for a good thing. Why, bless me, you want to be careful what relatives you have — some you can’t help — but a mother-in-law, you can.
MR HEMSTOCK: I want to speak to Nurse.
MR WILCOX (frock-coated): You’ve ‘ad a big loss, Mr Hemstock — I’ve been through it myself, so I know what it is.
BAKER: Here, I say, Hezekiah — I don’t mind you for a father-in-law —
MR WILCOX: Hello, Job Arthur! Well, I never! I am surprised, I can tell you.
BAKER: So’m I.
MR WILCOX: But it’s a glad surprise — I’d rather say “My son” to you, Job Arthur —
BAKER: Hold on a bit, Hezekiah; you’ve always stood me as a good uncle, let’s leave it at that.
MR WILCOX: I’ll make you a wedding present of it, Job Arthur — that little thing, you know.
BAKER: I do, worse luck! I’ve pledged my soul and my honour to you, uncle, my uncle on the pop-shop side, but my body’s my ewe lamb — I don’t sell. Good morning, Dr Foules.
DR FOULES: Good morning. Er — excuse me — but Nurse Broadbanks has not gone yet?
BAKER: Not yet, Doctor. Here’s her husband-that-is-to-be waiting for her.
DR FOULES: Ha!
MR WILCOX: Nurse has not gone yet, Doctor.
DR FOULES: Thank you.
BAKER: Let’s have a look! (He peeps into the church.) Oh — oh Baron, may I speak to you?
Enter BARON, in surplice, with BARONESS and NURSE.
BARON: And you, what have you to say?
BAKER: Not much. Only there’s a bit of an alteration wants makin’. Rachel’s given me the sack.
BARON: I do not understand, sir.
BARONESS: He wishes to escape from his promise. He wishes to dodge Rachel.
BARON: You, sir, have you not given your word?
BAKER: And you’re welcome keep it, for what it’s worth. But you can’t cork a woman’s promise, Baroness. In short, Baron — and Mr Wilcox — Rachel has asked to be released from her engagement — hem! — with me — and I have felt it my duty to release her. (He bows.)
BARON: It is an indignity to the Church. It is insult to the Holy Church.
BARONESS: I do not believe this man. It is his ruse to escape from a bond.
MR WILCOX: Yes, my lady, that’s what it is — my poor girl — Nurse! Nurse?
NURSE: Let Rachel come herself.
BARONESS: She shall.
BARON (to MR HEMSTOCK): Go and bring Rachel here.
MR HEMSTOCK (shrugging): Where am I to go?
NURSE: Please, Mr Hemstock.
He goes.
BARON: Sir, I believe you are a scoundrel.
BAKER: I wouldn’t deny it, Baron.
MR WILCOX: No — we know him too well — he’d better not begin denyin’.
NURSE: This is the man, Baron — the — the — the Wilcox.
BARON: What! What!
BARONESS: What do you mean, you old wicked man, insulting Nurse in this fashion?
BARON: You — you — you, sir! If you speak I will cut you down. The double shame, the double blasphemy! Ah! Leave from my sight — go — don’t stir, sir, till you answer.
DR FOULES: May I ask, Nurse, if I am to congratulate you on your banns?
NURSE: I should think you have no need to ask. I am ready to die. I am so mortified and ashamed.
BAKER: Hello — I am only the mote in the eye of the Church, am I? Oh uncle, uncle!
DR FOULES: Then it is a mistake?
NURSE: Worse. It is a mean, base contrivance to trap me. I knew nothing of these banns — I could have dropped. He knows I wouldn’t marry him — no, not if — not if —
BAKER: You died in a ditch with your shoes on. I’m undone this time, curse it. Uncle, have a pound of flesh, will you, instead? I could spare a pound and a half, cut judiciously.
BARON: What do you say, sir?
BAKER: I’m inviting him to have his pound of flesh, instead of his two hundred pounds of money. Though it’s dear meat, I own.
NURSE: What do you mean, Mr Bowers?
BAKER: I owe him £180, and he’ll foreclose on our house in a couple of months. Then goodbye my bakery, and they cart my old mother to a lunatic asylum, though she’s no more mad than I am.
BARONESS: And what have you done with the money?
BAKER: Paid some of my debts, Baroness — and some of it I have — as it were, eaten. So in a pound of flesh he’d get his money glorified.
BARON: What do you say, sir?
MR WILCOX: I say nothing.
CURTAIN
SCENE II
The vicarage garden wall, under which runs the path. RACHEL looks over the wall; enter HARRY.
RACHEL: All by yourself? Where’s the others?
HARRY: Stopping.
RACHEL: Did they give my father’s banns out?
HARRY: His’n an’ thine.
RACHEL: What! Mine! Why, I told Job Arthur as I wouldn’t have him.
HARRY: ‘Appen so.
RACHEL: I did. An’ he’s never told the Baron. Whatever shall I do?
HARRY: What?
RACHEL: You don’t believe as I told him.
HARRY: I believe nowt.
RACHEL: But I did, an’ he’s agreed. And did they ask my father and Nurse?
HARRY: Yes.
RACHEL: Oh — but I shan’t have him — I shan’t. The Baron’ll give it me — but I shan’t have him. You needn’t believe me, if you don’t want to.
HARRY: When did ter tell Job Arthur?
RACHEL: Yesterday. An’ he was glad. He doesn’t really care for me.
HARRY: Are ter having me on?
RACHEL: May I be struck dead this minute if I am.
HARRY: An’ what shall ter do?
RACHEL: I don’t know — go to Derby. Perhaps I’ll learn to be a nurse.
HARRY: She’s marryin’ thy father.
RACHEL (melting into tears): Don’t — tha’s hurt me enough. (Dashing away her tears.) Well, I must go in and see to the dinner. Then I’ll tell the Baron, and have my head bitten off. (She turns to go.)
HARRY: Are ter sure tha told Job Arthur?
RACHEL: Go and ask him.
HARRY: There’s no tellin’ what tha does.
RACHEL: No — there isn’t — for the simple reason that I’ve built my house on the sand.
HARRY: How dost mean?
RACHEL: You know right enough. Well, I’ll go an’ warm th’ rice pudding up.
HARRY: Rachel — dost care for me?
RACHEL: You’ll make me wild in a minute.
HARRY: Rachel — dunna go — it’s that lonely.
RACHEL: I s’ll have to go and put that pudding in.
HARRY: Come down here first — a minute.
RACHEL: Come you up here.
HARRY (climbing up): Rachel.
RACHEL: What?
HARRY: It seems that quiet-like — dunna go an’ leave me. I go rummagin’ down i’ the loose ground, to look at th’ coffin.
RACHEL: Do you?
HARRY: I do. I feel as if I should have to get at her an’ mak’ her speak. I canna stand this dead o’night quiet.
RACHEL: No.
HARRY: Comin’ out of church into this sunshine’s like goin’ in a cinematograph show. Things jumps about in a flare of light, an’ you expect it every minute to go out an’ be pitch dark. All the shoutin’ an’ singin’, an’ yet there’s a sort of quiet, Rachel.
RACHEL: Never mind — it will be so for a bit.
HARRY: I canna be by myself, though, I canna.
RACHEL: There are plenty of people.
HARRY: Nay, I non want ‘em.
RACHEL: Only Nurse.
HARRY: Nor her neither — never.
RACHEL: ‘Appen so.
HARRY: Tha doesna believe me?
RACHEL: “I believe nowt.”
HARRY: I wish I may drop dead this minute if I ever did care for her.
RACHEL (smiling): You thought you did?
HARRY: ‘Appen I did think so.
RACHEL: I know you did.
HARRY: But ‘er knows nowt about me, like thee.
RACHEL: No.
HARRY: Shall ter ha’e me, Rachel?
RACHEL: You want me?
HARRY: Let us be married afore the week’s out, Rachel. Dunna leave me by mysen.
RACHEL: Are you in a hurry now, at the last pinch?
HARRY: Shall ter, Rachel?
RACHEL: Yes. (He kisses her.)
MR HEMSTOCK (entering): I should ha thought you’d more about you than to be kissin’ there where everybody can see you — an’ to-day.
RACHEL: There’s nobody but you.
MR HEMSTOCK: You don’t know who there is.
RACHEL: And I don’t care. We’re going to be married directly.
MR HEMSTOCK: It’ll look nice, that will — his mother buried yesterday.
HARRY: It ma’es no difference to her, does it?
MR HEMSTOCK: Tha’rt a fawce un, Rachel. Tha’s contrived it, after a’. Tha’rt a fawce un, an’ no mistake. But tha’s got to come to the Baron.
RACHEL: What for?
MR HEMSTOCK: Nay, dunna ask me. Tha’d better look sharp. Ma’e thy heels crack.
RACHEL. What’s up now, I wonder?
They go out.
CURTAIN
SCENE III
The church porch.
BARON: Do not speak, sir. You have vilified me, you have held up the Church to ridicule.
MR WILCOX: I can speak, can’t I?
BARON: Do not speak, you shall not, do not speak. We will not hear your voice. You are a blasphemer.
MR WILCOX: I can’t see but what a Methodist’s as good as a Church, whatever. What have I done, what have I done?
BARONESS: What have you done!
MR WILCOX: Whatever anybody says, there’s nobody can say I’ve never done anything as wan’t right.
BARON: What, sir, what —
BAKER: Here’s Rachel.
SUSY: I’ll bet it’s her doin’s. She’s the deepest I ever met, bar none.
BARON: Rachel?
RACHEL: Yes, Baron.
BARON: Who wrote to see the letter of the banns for your father and Nurse?
MR WILCOX: I did.
BARON: Scoundrel! Impostor!
NURSE: You had not the slightest justification for it.
DR FOULES: Surely, Nurse, you are flattered. A woman loves a peremptory wooing.
MR WILCOX: You accepted me on Friday night, Nurse, you know you did.
NURSE: I did no such thing.
BAKER: Now, Rachel, speak up. I say you’ve refused me —
RACHEL: So I have.
BAKER: Of course. And I forgot to take the banns back.
RACHEL: That’s your lookout.
BARON: Rachel! Ah, insolent!
BAKER: Now, my case settled — did Nurse accept your father? Of course not.
RACHEL: She did.
MR WILCOX: There you are.
NURSE: I did not. I would not demean myself. I did not.
BARONESS: This is very funny, Nurse.
BARON: I have spoken the banns.
MR WILCOX: Come now, Nurse.
NURSE: You horrid, hateful old man. You know you worked yourself into a state, I thought you were delirious, and I had to promise anything.
MR WILCOX: A promise is a promise.
SUSY: Of all the deep-uns, Rachel, you cap all.
RACHEL: What’s it to do with me?
NURSE: You pestered and pestered and pestered me.
DR FOULES: All’s fair in love and war, Nurse.
BARON: What were the exact words?
RACHEL: “Yes, yes. I’ll marry you — if you’ll settle down now and go to sleep.”
NURSE: Why! What! You are an underhand thing.
RACHEL: What if I did happen to hear?
NURSE: You were listening!
RACHEL: I could hear it all.
NURSE: How hateful, how hateful!
BARON: I do not understand — explain.
NURSE: He was shamming —
MR WILCOX: She’s had me on a string —
RACHEL: She’s sniffed at him for months, wondering whether or not to lick him up.
DR FOULES: The debatable tit-bit.
BARON: I will understand this matter. Speak, Nurse.
NURSE: He shammed fever, delirium — and to comfort him, to soothe him, I said I would marry him. I thought he was raving. And I would not marry him — I’d rather beg in the streets.
MR WILCOX: Oh, but Nurse, Nurse, look here.
BARON: Silence, sir, silence. You are a base, malingering pulamiting wretch.
RACHEL: Well, she came to see him often enough, and stopped long enough —
BARONESS: You cannot, Baron, blame the man for everything.
DR FOULES: A man who was delirious in fever on Friday night would hardly be disporting himself at church on Sunday morning —
MR WILCOX: I’m not disporting myself.
BARONESS: I don’t know. It’s not much, and there are still miracles.
DR FOULES: Surely miracles are not wasted on — Methodists, Baroness?
BARONESS: I do not know — I do not know. Rachel, did you put the pudding to warm?
RACHEL: Yes’m.
BARONESS: Then it’s burnt to a cinder.
BARON: You, sir, you Wilcox, are a base scoundrel.
MR WILCOX: She shall pay for this.
NURSE: I must have it contradicted — I must.
BAKER: I will contradict it, Nurse.
DR FOULES: And I.
MR HEMSTOCK: And me.
HARRY: An’ me.
BARONESS: But I’m not so sure —
BARON: Enough, enough. I am again a disgrace and a laughing stock. You, sir, you Wilcox —
MR WILCOX: What, Baron von Ruge?
BARON: You — you — you are a scoundrel.
BAKER: It’s old news.
BARON: I withdraw and refute these double banns next Sunday.
MR WILCOX: Not with my consent.
BARON: Do not speak. And in the public paper must be refutation.
NURSE: Oh, isn’t it dreadful!
SUSY: Folks shouldn’t shilly-shally.
BARON: And then — I have done.
DR FOULES: Perhaps you can say there was a mistake. Substitute my name for that of Mr Wilcox.
BAKER: All’s fair in love and war. Substitute Mrs Smalley’s name for Rachel’s.
RACHEL: A change for the better is always welcome. Substitute Harry Hemstock for Job Arthur Bowers.
BARON: This is madness and insult.
DR FOULES: It is deadly earnest, Baron. Nurse, will you be asked in church with me next Sunday?
BAKER: Susy, will you be asked in church with me next Sunday?
HARRY: Rachel, shall you be axed in church with me next Sunday?
BARON: Enough, enough! Go away, I will suffer no more of this!
BARONESS: Such wicked frivolity! Rachel, go home at once to see to that pudding.
DR FOULES: We are most deeply serious, Nurse, are we not?
BAKER: Susy, are we not?
HARRY: Rachel, are we not?
RACHEL: Chorus of ladies, “Yes”!
NURSE AND SUSY: Chorus of ladies, “Yes”!
DR FOULES: Millicent Broadbanks — Arthur William Foules.
BAKER: Job Arthur Bowers — Susan Smalley, née Hemstock, widow.
HARRY: Rachel Wilcox — Harry Hemstock.
BARON: Away! Away!
DR FOULES: Baron, you should play Duke to our “As You Like It”.
BARON: I do not like it, I will not.
SUSY: Then lump it.
MR WILCOX: I call it scandalous, going on like this.
RACHEL: Like it or lump it, Father, like it or lump it.
DR FOULES: You accept me, Nurse?
NURSE: I do, Doctor. (He kisses her hand.)
BAKER: You accept me, Susan?
SUSY: This once, Job Arthur. (He kisses her cheek.)
RACHEL (after a moment): Come on here, Harry. (They kiss on the mouth.)
BARON: Go away from here. You shall not pollute my church.
BARONESS: It is disgraceful.
MR WILCOX: They want horsewhipping, every one of them.
MR HEMSTOCK: Well — I must say —
DR FOULES: It’s “As You Like It”.
BAKER: It’s “As You Lump It”, Hezekiah.
CURTAIN