第6章 SCENE I(1)

MR. ROBERTS; MR. CAMPBELL

In Mr Roberts's dressing-room, that gentleman is discovered tragically confronting Mr. Willis Campbell, with a watch uplifted in either hand.

WILLIS: 'Well?'

ROBERTS, gasping: 'My--my watch!'

WILLIS: 'Yes. How comes there to be two of it?'

ROBERTS: 'Don't you understand? When I went out I--didn't take my watch--with me. I left it here on my bureau.'

WILLIS: 'Well?'

ROBERTS: 'Oh, merciful heavens! don't you see? Then I couldn't have been robbed!'

WILLIS: 'Well, but whose watch did you take from the fellow that didn't rob you, then?'

ROBERTS: 'His own!' He abandons himself powerlessly upon a chair.

'Yes; I left my own watch here, and when that person brushed against me in the Common, I missed it for the first time. I supposed he had robbed me, and ran after him, and--'

WILLIS: 'Robbed HIM!'

ROBERTS: 'Yes.'

WILLIS: 'Ah, ha, ha, ha! I, hi, hi, hi! O, ho, ho, ho!' He yields to a series of these gusts and paroxysms, bowing up and down, and stamping to and fro, and finally sits down exhausted, and wipes the tears from his cheeks. 'Really, this thing will kill me. What are you going to do about it, Roberts?'

ROBERTS, with profound dejection and abysmal solemnity: 'I don't know, Willis. Don't you see that it must have been--that I must have robbed--Mr. Bemis?'

WILLIS: 'Bemis!' After a moment for tasting the fact. 'Why, so it was! Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! And was poor old Bemis that burly ruffian? that bloodthirsty gang of giants? that--that--oh, Lord! oh, Lord!' He bows his head upon his chair-back in complete exhaustion, demanding, feebly, as he gets breath for the successive questions, 'What are you going to d-o-o-o? What shall you s-a-a-a-y? How can you expla-a-ain it?'

ROBERTS: 'I can do nothing. I can say nothing. I can never explain it. I must go to Mr. Bemis and make a clean breast of it; but think of the absurdity--the ridicule!'

WILLIS, after a thoughtful silence: 'Oh, it isn't THAT you've got to think of. You've got to think of the old gentleman's sense of injury and outrage. Didn't you hear what he said--that he would have handed over his dearest friend, his own brother, to the police?'

ROBERTS: 'But that was in the supposition that his dearest friend, his own brother, had intentionally robbed him. You can't imagine, Willis--'

WILLIS: 'Oh, I can imagine a great many things. It's all well enough for you to say that the robbery was a mistake; but it was a genuine case of garotting as far as the assault and taking the watch go. He's a very pudgicky old gentleman.'

ROBERTS: 'He is.'

WILLIS: 'And I don't see how you're going to satisfy him that it was all a joke. Joke? It WASN'T a joke! It was a real assault and a bona fide robbery, and Bemis can prove it.'

ROBERTS: 'But he would never insist--'

WILLIS: 'Oh, I don't know about that. He's pretty queer, Bemis is.

You can't say what an old gentleman like that will or won't do. If he should choose to carry it into court--'

ROBERTS: 'Court!'

WILLIS: 'It might be embarrassing. And anyway, it would have a very strange look in the papers.'

ROBERTS: 'The papers! Good gracious!'

WILLIS: 'Ten years from now a man that heard you mentioned would forget all about the acquittal, and say: "Roberts? Oh yes! Wasn't he the one they sent to the House of Correction for garotting an old friend of his on the Common!" You see, it wouldn't do to go and make a clean breast of it to Bemis.'

ROBERTS: 'I see.'

WILLIS: 'What will you do?'

ROBERTS: 'I must never say anything to him about it. Just let it go.'

WILLIS: 'And keep his watch? I don't see how you could manage that. What would you do with the watch? You might sell it, of course--'

ROBERTS: 'Oh no, I COULDN'T do that.'

WILLIS: 'You might give it away to some deserving person; but if it got him into trouble--'

ROBERTS: 'No, no; that wouldn't do, either.'

WILLIS: 'And you can't have it lying around; Agnes would be sure to find it, sooner or later.'

ROBERTS: 'Yes.'

WILLIS: 'Besides, there's your conscience. Your conscience wouldn't LET you keep Bemis's watch away from him. And if it would, what do you suppose Agnes's conscience would do when she came to find it out? Agnes hasn't got much of a head--the want of it seems to grow upon her; but she's got a conscience as big as the side of a house.'

ROBERTS: 'Oh, I see; I see.'

WILLIS, coming up and standing over him, with his hands in his pockets: 'I tell you what, Roberts, you're in a box.'

ROBERTS, abjectly: 'I know it, Willis; I know it. What do you suggest? You MUST know some way out of it.'

WILLIS: 'It isn't a simple matter like telling them to start the elevator down when they couldn't start her up. I've got to think it over.' He walks to and fro, Roberts's eyes helplessly following his movements. 'How would it do to--No, that wouldn't do, either.'

ROBERTS: 'What wouldn't?'

WILLIS: 'Nothing. I was just thinking--I say, you might--Or, no, you couldn't.'

ROBERTS: 'Couldn't what?'

WILLIS: 'Nothing. But if you were to--No; up a stump that way too.'

ROBERTS: 'Which way? For mercy's sake, my dear fellow, don't seem to get a clew if you haven't it. It's more than I can bear.' He rises, and desperately confronts Willis in his promenade. 'If you see any hope at all--'

WILLIS, stopping: 'Why, if you were a different sort of fellow, Roberts, the thing would be perfectly easy.'

ROBERTS: 'Very well, then. What sort of fellow do you want me to be? I'll be any sort of fellow you like.'

WILLIS: 'Oh, but you couldn't! With that face of yours, and that confounded conscience of yours behind it, you would give away the whitest lie that was ever told.'