A Prologue (to An Unwritten Play)
by
Characters: James Hamilton, Mary Fawcett, Rachael Lavine, two slaves. Place: Nevis, British West Indies. Time: The month of April, 1756.
[A large room, with open windows, to which are attached heavy inside wooden shutters furnished with iron bars. Beyond the windows are seen masses of tropical trees and foliage, green and more brilliantly hued, filled with screaming birds and monkeys. In the court is a fountain. The house is half-way up the mountain, and between the trees is a glint of the sea. The room is severely simple. There are no curtains, carpets, nor upholstered furniture; but there are two handsome pieces of mahogany, a bookcase full of books bound in old calf, a table on which are tropical fruits and cooling drinks in earthen jugs, one or two palm-trees, and Caribbean pottery on shelves. In one corner is a harp.
In the distance is heard a loud menacing roar. The sky is covered with racing clouds. Suffusing everything is a livid light.
Mistress Fawcett is leaning on her crutch, looking through one of the windows. Two slaves are crouching on the floor. All are in an intense attitude, listening. Suddenly there is heard the quick loud firing of cannon, four guns in rapid succession. The negroes shriek and crouch lower as if they would insinuate their trembling bodies through the floor. Mistress Fawcett hastily closes the window by which she is standing, swings to and bars its shutters. Immediately after may be heard the sound, gradually diminishing in the distance, of a long line of windows slammed and barred. Mistress Fawcett attempts to move the shutters of the other window, but the hinges are rusty and defy her feeble strength.]
MISTRESS FAWCETT (to the slaves). Come here. Close this window. Did you not hear the guns? A hurricane is upon us.
THE SLAVES (crouching lower and wailing almost unintelligibly). Oh, mistress, save us! Send for oby doctor!
MISTRESS FAWCETT. To strangle you with a horse-hair pie! Your obeah charlatans are grovelling in their cellars. Only our courage and our two hands can save us to-day. Come! (Beating the floor with her crutch.) A hundred man slaves on the estate, and not one to help us save the house! Are my daughter and I to do it all? Get up! (She menaces them with her crutch.)
THE SLAVES (not moving). Oh, mistress!
[Enter RACHAEL. She walks to the open window and looks out.]
MISTRESS FAWCETT. Close the windows, Rachael. I cannot. And those creatures are empty skulls.
RACHAEL. In a moment.
MISTRESS FAWCETT. In a moment? Open your ears. Do you want to see the roof racing with the wind?’
RACHAEL. The hurricane is still miles away.
MISTRESS FAWCETT. Great God! How can you stand there and wait for a hurricane? Do you realize that an hour, if this old house be not strong enough, may see us struggling out in those roaring waters? These desolate afflicted Caribbees! They have tested my courage many times, and I can go through this without flinching; but I cannot stand that unnatural calm of yours.
RACHAEL. Do I seem calm? (She closes and bars the window.) It is a fine sight. We may never have such another.
MISTRESS FAWCETT. Nor live to know.
RACHAEL (her back is still turned, as she shakes and tests the window). Well, what of that? Are you so in love with life?
MISTRESS FAWCETT. Even at sixty I am in no haste to be blown out of it. And if I were twenty–
RACHAEL (turning suddenly, and facing her mother). At twenty, with forty years of nothingness before you, cut off from all the joy of life, on an island in the Caribbean Sea, what then? (She snaps her fingers.) That for the worst a hurricane can do!
MISTRESS FAWCETT (uneasily). Do not let us talk of personal things to-day.
RACHAEL. I never felt more personal.
MISTRESS FAWCETT (looking at her keenly). I believe you are excited.