The scene is a darkened room, which the curtain reveals so stealthilythat if there was a mouse on the stage it is there still. Our objectis to catch our two chief characters unawares; they are Darkness andLight.
The room is so obscure as to be invisible, but at the back of theobscurity are French windows, through which is seen Lob's gardenbathed in moon-shine. The Darkness and Light, which this room andgarden represent, are very still, but we should feel that it is onlythe pause in which old enemies regard each other before they come tothe grip. The moonshine stealing about among the flowers, to givethem their last instructions, has left a smile upon them, but it is asmile with a menace in it for the dwellers in darkness. What weexpect to see next is the moonshine slowly pushing the windows open,so that it may whisper to a confederate in the house, whose name isLob. But though we may be sure that this was about to happen it doesnot happen; a stir among the dwellers in darkness prevents it.
These unsuspecting ones are in the dining-room, and as a communicatingdoor opens we hear them at play. Several tenebrious shades appear inthe lighted doorway and hesitate on the two steps that lead down intothe unlit room. The fanciful among us may conceive a rustle at thesame moment among the flowers. The engagement has begun, though notin the way we had intended.
VOICES.—
'Go on, Coady: lead the way.'
'Oh dear, I don't see why I should go first.'
'The nicest always goes first.'
'It is a strange house if I am the nicest.'
'It is a strange house.'
'Don't close the door; I can't see where the switch is.'
'Over here.'
They have been groping their way forward, blissfully unaware of howthey shall be groping there again more terribly before the night isout. Some one finds a switch, and the room is illumined, with theeffect that the garden seems to have drawn back a step as if worstedin the first encounter. But it is only waiting.
The apparently inoffensive chamber thus suddenly revealed is, for abachelor's home, creditably like a charming country housedrawing-room and abounds in the little feminine touches that are sooften best applied by the hand of man. There is nothing in the roominimical to the ladies, unless it be the cut flowers which are fromthe garden and possibly in collusion with it. The fireplace may alsobe a little dubious. It has been hacked out of a thick wall which mayhave been there when the other walls were not, and is presumably thecavern where Lob, when alone, sits chatting to himself among the bluesmoke. He is as much at home by this fire as any gnome that may behiding among its shadows; but he is less familiar with the rest ofthe room, and when he sees it, as for instance on his lonely way tobed, he often stares long and hard at it before chucklinguncomfortably.
There are five ladies, and one only of them is elderly, the Mrs. Coadewhom a voice in the darkness has already proclaimed the nicest. Sheis the nicest, though the voice was no good judge. Coady, as she isfamiliarly called and as her