Short Plays · Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction (2/2) (2/2) (2/2)

| Adolphus | Thanks, thanks, oh, thanks! He drinks. A terrific fizzing is heard. He starts up screaming. Help! help! The ceiling is effervescing! I am bursting! He wallows convulsively on the bed. | | Fitz | Quick! the rug strap! They pack him with blankets and strap him. Is that tight enough? | | Magnesia | Anxiously. Will you hold, do you think? | | Adolphus | The peril is past. The soda-water has gone flat. | | Magnesia Fitz | Thank heaven! | | | Phyllis returns with a washstand ewer, in which she has dissolved the bust. | | Magnesia | Snatching it. At last! | | Fitz | You are saved. Drain it to the dregs. | | | Fitztollemache holds the lip of the ewer to Adolphus’s mouth and gradually raises it until it stands upside down. Adolphus’s efforts to swallow it are fearful, Phyllis thumping his back when he chokes, and Magnesia loosening the straps when he moans. At last, with a sigh of relief, he sinks back in the women’s arms. Fitz shakes the empty ewer upside down like a potman shaking the froth out of a flagon. | | Adolphus | How inexpressibly soothing to the chest! A delicious numbness steals through all my members. I would sleep. | | Magnesia Fitz Phyllis | Whispering together. Let him sleep. | | | He sleeps. Celestial harps are heard, but their chords cease on the abrupt entrance of the Landlord, a vulgar person in pyjamas. | | The Landlord | Eah! Eah! Wots this? Wots all this noise? Ah kin ennybody sleep through it? Looking at the floor and ceiling. Ellow! wot you bin doin te maw ceilin? | | Fitz | Silence, or leave the room. If you wake that man he dies. | | The Landlord | If ’e kin sleep through the noise you three mikes ’e kin sleep through ennythink. | | Magnesia | Detestable vulgarian: your pronunciation jars on the finest chords of my nature. Begone! | | The Landlord | Looking at Adolphus. Aw downt blieve eze esleep. Aw blieve eze dead. Calling. Pleece! Pleece! Merder! A blue halo plays mysteriously on the door, which opens and reveals a Policeman. Thunder. Eah, pleecmin: these three’s bin an merdered this gent between em, an naw tore moy ahse dahn. | | The Policeman | Offended. Policeman, indeed! Where’s your manners? | | Fitz | Officer⁠— | | The Policeman | With distinguished consideration. Sir? | | Fitz | As between gentlemen⁠— | | The Policeman | Bowing. Sir: to you. | | Fitz | Bowing. I may inform you that my friend had an acute attack of indigestion. No carbonate of soda being available, he swallowed a portion of this man’s ceiling. Pointing to Adolphus. Behold the result! | | The Policeman | The ceiling was poisoned! Well, of all the artful⁠—He collars the Landlord. I arrest you for wilful murder. | | The Landlord | Appealing to the heavens. Ow, is this jestice! Ah could aw tell ’e wiz gowin te eat moy ceilin’? | | The Policeman | Releasing him. True. The case is more complicated than I thought. He tries to lift Adolphus’s arm but cannot. Stiff already. | | The Landlord | Trying to lift Adolphus’s leg. An’ precious evvy. Feeling the calf. Woy, eze gorn ez awd ez niles. | | Fitz | Rushing to the bed. What is this? | | Magnesia | Oh, say not he is dead. Phyllis: fetch a doctor. Phyllis* runs out. They all try to lift Adolphus, but he is perfectly stiff, and as heavy as lead. Rouse him. Shake him. | | The Policeman | Exhausted. Whew! Is he a man or a statue? Magnesia utters a piercing scream. What’s wrong, Miss? | | Magnesia | To Fitz. Do you not see what has happened? | | Fitz | Striking his forehead. Horror on horror’s head! | | The Landlord | Wotjemean? | | Magnesia | The plaster has set inside him. The officer was right: he is indeed a living statue. | | | Magnesia flings herself on the stony breast of Adolphus. Fitztollemache buries his head in his hands; and his chest heaves convulsively. The Policeman takes a small volume from his pocket and consults it. | | The Policeman | This case is not provided for in my book of instructions. It don’t seem no use trying artificial respiration, do it? To the Landlord. Here! lend a hand, you. We’d best take him and set him up in Trafalgar Square. | | The Landlord | Aushd pat im in the cestern an worsh it aht of im. | | | Phyllis comes back with a Doctor. | | Phyllis | The medical man, my lady. | | The Policeman | A poison case, sir. | | The Doctor | Do you mean to say that an unqualified person! a layman! has dared to administer poison in my district? | | The Policeman | Raising Magnesia tenderly. It looks like it. Hold up, my lady. | | The Doctor | Not a moment must be lost The patient must be kept awake at all costs. Constant and violent motion is necessary. | | | He snatches Magnesia from the Policeman, and rushes her about the room. | | Fitz | Stop! That is not the poisoned person! | | The Doctor | It is you, then. Why did you not say so before? | | | He seizes Fitztollemache and rushes him about. | | The Landlord | Naow, naow, thet ynt im. | | The Doctor | What, you! | | | He pounces on the Landlord and rushes him round. | | The Landlord | Eah! chack it He trips the Doctor up. Both fall. Jest owld this leoonatic, will you. Mister Horficer? | | The Policeman | Dragging both of them to their feet. Come out of it, will you. You must all come with me to the station. | | | Thunder. | | Magnesia | What! In this frightful storm! | | | The hail patters noisily on the window. | | Phyllis | I think it’s raining. | | | The wind howls. | | The Landlord | It’s thanderin and lawtnin. | | Fitz | It’s dangerous. | | The Policeman | Drawing his baton and whistle. If you won’t come quietly, then⁠— | | | He whistles. A fearful flash is followed by an appalling explosion of heaven’s artillery. A thunderbolt enters the room, and strikes the helmet of the devoted constable, whence it is attracted to the waistcoat of the Doctor by the lancet in his pocket. Finally it leaps with fearful force on the Landlord, who, being of a gross and spongy nature, absorbs the electric fluid at the cost of his life. The others look on horror-stricken as the three victims, after reeling, jostling, cannoning through a ghastly quadrille, at last sink inanimate on the carpet. | | Magnesia | Listening at the Doctor’s chest. Dead! | | Fitz | Kneeling by the Landlord, and raising his hand, which drops with a thud. Dead! | | Phyllis | Seizing the looking glass and holding it to the Policeman’s lips. Dead! | | Fitz | Solemnly rising. The copper attracted the lightning. | | Magnesia | Rising. After life’s fitful fever they sleep well. Phyllis: sweep them up. | | | Phyllis replaces the looking glass on the dressing table; takes up the fan; and fans the Policeman, who rolls away like a leaf before the wind to the wall. She disposes similarly of the Landlord and Doctor. | | Phyllis | Will they be in your way if I leave them there until morning, my lady? Or shall I bring up the ashpan and take them away? | | Magnesia | They will not disturb us. Goodnight, Phyllis. | | Phyllis | Goodnight, my lady. Goodnight, sir. | | | She retires. | | Magnesia | And now, husband, let us perform our last sad duty to our friend. He has become his own monument. Let us erect him. He is heavy; but love can do much. | | Fitz | A litte leverage will get him on his feet. Give me my umbrella. | | Magnesia | True. | | | She hands him the umbrella, and takes up the bootjack. They get them under Adolphus’s* back, and prize him up on his feet. | | Fitz | That’s done it! Whew! | | Magnesia | Kneeling at the left hand of the statue. Forever and forever, Adolphus. | | Fitz | Kneeling at the right hand of the statue. The rest is silence. | | | The Angels sing “Bill Bailey.” The statue raises its hands in an attitude of blessing, and turns its limelit face to heaven as the curtain falls. National Anthem. | | Attendants | In front. All out for the next performance. Pass along, please, ladies and gentlemen: pass along. |