FANNY OTCOTT

FANNY OTCOTT

That great actress, Mrs. Otcott, an actress in the tradition of the Siddons, the Oldfield, Bracegirdle, O’Neill, is spending a quiet month in Wales. We do not see the cottage; we do not even see the mountains, but there is a stretch of lawn on whose gentle slope there stands an ancient round tower overgrown with ivy. In the shadow of this Arthurian monument Mrs. Otcott has placed a table whereon she is sorting old engravings, playbills, letters, contracts, ribbons—in short, her past. She is still the handsome, humorous, Irish soul from whom every item out of the old trunks exacts its exclamation, its gesture, its renewed indignation or pleasure. She is attended by a blackamoor boy in livery, half asleep against a flower-pot.

MRS. OTCOTT

Sampson! Tay!

SAMPSON

[Springing up.]

Yes, mam. Wid or widout a streak o’ cream?

MRS. OTCOTT

Widout. And Sampson, tell Pence I am not at home. Not even to the one in the yellow curls, or to the good black beard. And if they seem to know that I am at home, tell them ... that I have gone up the tower, or that I have the vapors.

SAMPSON

You wants tea widout, and tell Mrs. Pence you don’t want to see none of de gentlemen from de Village Inn,—dat you has de vapors.

MRS. OTCOTT

There! Do you see that, Sampson? I wore that the night the King dined with me on the stage.

SAMPSON

[His eyes as big as soup-plates.]

King ... James!

MRS. OTCOTT

[Shuddering.]

No, stupid—Charles.—Go away!—This afternoon I shall devote to another woman, to another and a different woman and yet to myself, to myself, to myself.

SAMPSON

I’ll tell Mrs. Pence.

[He goes out. Mrs. Otcott picks up a packet of letters. One look, tosses them away, then rises muttering, goes and stamps on them and laughs. She returns to pick up a playbill and reads the heading with glistening eyes: “Fanny Otcott as Faizella in the ‘Princess of Cathay.’ First time.” She strides about lost in thought. She almost walks into a gentleman who has entered through the hedge. He is wearing a black hat and cape, and has a serious worn face.]

ATCHESON

Your servant, Mrs. Otcott.

MRS. OTCOTT

[Thunderstruck.]

Why, no! Yes! By the garter, it is George Atcheson. Oh! Oh! Oh!

ATCHESON

I do not disturb you, Mrs. Otcott? I ... I came to discuss a thing that is very serious to me.

MRS. OTCOTT

[Suddenly very pleased.]

Everything is—sit down, my friend. You always were very serious. That’s why you made such a bad Hamlet. Delay your serious talk, George, and tell me about the women you have loved since you loved me, and confess that I finally made them all unendurable to you.

ATCHESON

You misunderstand me, Mrs. Otcott....

MRS. OTCOTT

[Loudly.]

Fanny.

ATCHESON

Ah ... Fanny?

MRS. OTCOTT

All you need is a little coaxing. Well, George, a woman drove you on to the stage when you were preparing for the Church, and a woman drove you off, and it was my greatest service to the stage. Look, George, you remember me as Faizella in the Princess of Cathay. I never did better than that. Great Rufus, you played opposite me in it. Look!

ATCHESON

Perhaps you remember.... I lost consciousness....

MRS. OTCOTT

Ah yes! The pale divinity student fainted. Oh! George, you were the first of my lovers. No, it wasn’t love, perhaps, but it was beautiful. It was like hawthorn-buds and meadow-larks and Mr. Handel’s Water-music. And since, I have never ceased searching for love. Perhaps love strikes the first time or never at all. Then I was too much in love with my work. And oh, George, how young we were! But you were very dear to me in the old garret, and I’m sorry to see you’re growing stout, for it’s one more reminder that I shall probably live and die without having known the lightning of love.

[She sits down with a great flow of silken draperies and shakes her head at him ruefully.]

ATCHESON

I have come to discuss our ... our association....

MRS. OTCOTT

Thunder and Hell! don’t you call that an association!

ATCHESON

... but my view of it is very different.

[Her shoe commences to mark time nervously on the turf.]

After my retirement from the Stage I resumed my theological studies, and I am now Bishop of Westholmstead.

[The shoe is now motionless.]

None of my friends know of that ... that experience in my life, but it has always remained as a bitter ... as a distressing spot in my conscience.

MRS. OTCOTT

[After a pause, very rapidly.]

I see, you want to make a clean breast of the perilous stuff. You want to make a public confession, probably. You are married?

ATCHESON

Yes.

MRS. OTCOTT

You have several sons probably?

ATCHESON

Yes.

MRS. OTCOTT

And you lie awake nights, saying: Hypocrisy, hypocrisy.

[Pause.]

Well, make your confession. But why consult me?

ATCHESON

I have followed your course, madam, and seen the growing admiration your art commands in Court,—I might almost say in the Church.

MRS. OTCOTT

You do not suppose that that revelation would cast any deeper shadow on the good name of Fanny Otcott, such as it is. Remember, George, the months you call sinful. It wasn’t love, perhaps, but it was grace and poetry. The heavens rained odors on us. It was as childlike and harmless as paintings on fans. I was a girl tragedienne reciting verses endlessly before a mirror and you were a young student who for the first time had seen a young girl braid her hair and sing at her work. Since then you have learned long names from books and heard a great many sneers from women as old as myself. You have borrowed your ideas from those who have never begun to live and who dare not.

ATCHESON

[His head in his hands and his elbows on his knees.]

I do not know what to think. Your reasoning is full of perils.

MRS. OTCOTT

Go away and tell your congregations what you please. I feel as though you were communicating to my mind some of those pitiable remorses that have weakened you. I have sinned, but I have not that year on my conscience. It is that year and my playing of Faizella that will bring troops of angels to welcome me to Paradise. Go away and tell your congregations what you please.

ATCHESON

You give me no help in the matter, Mrs. Otcott.

MRS. OTCOTT

Go away. In the name of Heaven, go!

[Crooked with doubt and hesitation, the Bishop of Westholmstead goes out through the hedge. For a few moments Mrs. Otcott sits on the table, swinging one foot and muttering savagely in an imaginary conversation.]

[Reënter Sampson with a tray.]

SAMPSON

Three gentlemen waited on you from de Village Inn, but Mrs. Pence sent dem away. She said you was up de tower, mam.

MRS. OTCOTT

[Showily.]

Go call them back, Sampson. Tell them I have come down from de tower. Bring up the best box of wine, the one with my picture painted on it. I shall be young again.