START. Lady Castlejordan: Well! I see wh...

START. Lady Castlejordan: Well! I see what you’re thinking about.

Minchin: Lord Noel--that’s Lady Noeline?

Lady Castlejordan: From your point of view, yes.

Minchin: Oh, dear, oh, dear!

Lady Castlejordan: Noel has been staying with Mrs. Vipont in town for some weeks. The Viponts have been kept in London, you know, by the late session. I’ve missed Noel sadly. (Referring to her watch) He will be at the Hall in half an hour.

Minchin: Will he! And will your two other gir--boys?

Lady Castlejordan: They spent their August in Scotland; they’ve been home some days. (Walking about restlessly) It chafes me so to think I am not at the station myself to meet my eldest son.

Minchin: You’ve deputed--whom did I hear you say?

Lady Castlejordan: Sergeant Shuter.

Minchin: Man or woman?

Lady Castlejordan: From your point of view, woman, I suppose.

Minchin: Why Sergeant?

Lady Castlejordan: Late husband held that rank in Castlejordan’s old regiment.

Minchin: What duties does she--he--perform here?

Lady Castlejordan: Teaching my boys boxing, fencing, athletics generally.

Minchin: (Groaning) Oh!

Lady Castlejordan: A splendid fellow. At the same time, I should dearly liked to have gone to Scrumleigh station to meet Noel.

Minchin: You’re detained here, I gather?

Lady Castlejordan: Detained! I don’t venture beyond the park now-a-days more than I can help. You know why, surely?

Minchin: H’m! Well--

Lady Castlejordan: You know what they call me outside, at Great Overcote, and Little Overcote, and at Scrumleigh--ah, even in London!

Minchin: Yes, yes.

Lady Castlejordan: The Eccentric Lady Castlejordan. (Scornfully) Eccentric!

Minchin: My dear Lady Castlejordan, the truth is that I’ve presumed to call on you this morning in the hope that I may be permitted to modestly reason with you on this very subject.

Lady Castlejordan: Again?

Minchin: Once more.

Lady Castlejordan: Sit down.

(They sit; she on the camp-stool, he on the stump of a tree)

Minchin: To begin with, it would be disingenuous to conceal from you that I do constantly hear very severe strictures passed upon your line of conduct.

Lady Castlejordan: You’ve heard them for the last ten years, ever since my husband died.

Minchin: But these strictures are more severe now than ever, and with some justice. When your children were children there was small harm in your playfully regarding them as boys and allowing them to romp and riot. But to-day here are three young women--

Lady Castlejordan: No!

Minchin: Three strapping young women--

Lady Castlejordan: No!

Minchin: I will repeat, I do repeat, three bouncing young women!

Lady Castlejordan: Well, in detail, I admit my children are perhaps what you describe. But in disposition, in mind, in muscle, they are three find, stalwart young fellows.

Minchin: But Great Overcote, and Little Overcote, and Scrumleigh do not look upon them as--

Lady Castlejordan: Are Great Overcote, and Little Overcote, and Scrumleigh competent judges of my bitter heart-burnings and disappointments? You knew Jack, my husband?

Minchin: Ah, yes, indeed.

Lady Castlejordan: What was he?

Minchin: A gentle giant. A grand piece of muscular humanity. In frame, the Vikings must have been of the same pattern.

Lady Castlejordan: And you remember me as I was twenty years ago?

Minchin: (Looking at her) I’ve no excuse for forgetting.

Lady Castlejordan: I was a fit mate for my husband?

Minchin: Perfect.

Lady Castlejordan: Even in Jack’s time I never scaled less than ten stone, and he could lift me as if I were a sawdust doll. Old friend--! Oh, old friend, what a son my son and Jack’s ought to have been!

(She goes to the gate and leans upon it, turning her back to Minchin, who has also risen)

Minchin: But--but--but it didn’t please Providence to send you a son.

Lady Castlejordan: (Beating the gate) Oh! Oh!

Minchin: Come, come, do learn to view the matter resignedly!

Lady Castlejordan: Girls! Girls!

Minchin: It’s an old story now--

Lady Castlejordan: Girls!

Minchin: Why despise girls? Many people like girls. Bless my heart, I like girls!

Lady Castlejordan: You can recall Noeline’s arrival. I was sure she was going to be a boy--so was Jack. I knew it--so did Jack. The child was to have been christened Noel, Jack’s second name.

Minchin: Yes, I was up at the Hall that night, smoking with Castlejordan to keep him quiet.

Lady Castlejordan: Poor dear, I remember his bending over me afterwards and whispering, “Damn it, Miriam, you’ve lost a whole season’s hunting for nothing!” Then the second--

Minchin: Lady Wilhelmina.

Lady Castlejordan: Yes, Billy came next. Jack wouldn’t speak to me for a couple of months after that, the only fall-out we ever had.

Minchin: But your third, Lady Thomasin--

Lady Castlejordan: Dearest Tommy! Oh, by that time Jack and I had agreed to regard anything that was born to us as a boy and to treat it accordingly, and for the rest of his life my husband taught our three children--there never was another--to ride, fish, shoot, swim, fence, fight, wrestle, throw, run, jump, until they were as hardy as Indians and their muscles burst the sleeves of their jackets. And, when Jack went, I continued their old training. Of course, I--I recognise my boys’ deficiencies, but I’m making the best of the great disappointment of my life, and I--well, call me the eccentric Lady Castlejordan! What do I care?

(She sits, wiping her eyes)

Minchin: Ah, well, well! I’ve great sympathy. But I really do think that the time has arrived now--

Lady Castlejordan: Now! Pardon me, but you can’t know what you’re talking about.

Minchin: Eh?

Lady Castlejordan: You haven’t forgotten, have you, that the title went to my husband’s brother in default of my being the mother of a--of a complete boy?

Minchin: Of course I haven’t.

Lady Castlejordan: And that this man, the present Lord Castlejordan, a wizen creature without shoulders, has a son?

Minchin: I know that.

Lady Castlejordan: A son! And Lady Castlejordan a wisp of a woman with a mouth like a rabbit’s! And they have a son!

Minchin: Lord Litterly. He’s at Oxford.

Lady Castlejordan: He has just come down. And what do you think! That young man has carried everything before him at the University--everything!

Minchin: Why, I heard he’d failed even to take a pass degree.

Lady Castlejordan: Bother his degree! He was first string in the mile and quarter-mile against Cambridge at Queen’s Club; he got his cricket blue and came within two of making his century at Lord’s; and in Rugby football he was the best three-quarter back in the Oxford fifteen that’s been known for the last five and twenty years. Oh! The torture of it!

Minchin: Now, come, come! I don’t see--!

Lady Castlejordan: You don’t see that this is the son Jack and I ought to have had! No! (Pacing to and fro) Heavens, if this young man had been sickly, stunted, freckled, weak, anaemic, red-eyed, narrow-chested--!

Minchin: Hush, hush.

Lady Castlejordan: Or, better still, humpbacked, with one short leg, it might have made me a more contented, gentler woman! But, as it is--

Minchin: Now, now!

Lady Castlejordan: And you choose this moment for suggesting that I should look matters straight in the face and realise the melancholy maternal muddle I’ve made.

Minchin: You know, I’ve had an idea for some time past--but, there, you’re not on friendly terms with the present Lord Castlejordan and his family?

Lady Castlejordan: (Indignantly) Friendly terms!

Minchin: Because it has often struck me that it might be a small consolation to you to know this young man--

Lady Castlejordan: Never!

Minchin: Tut, tut! You might grow to be fond of Lord Litterly.

Lady Castlejordan: Fond of him! Fond of the youth that Nature--Nature, for whom I’ve done so much!--has taken from me and given to that insignificant little woman! No, never shall one of us exchange a word even with one of them! Never, I say! Never!

END: Minchin: Oh, dear, oh, dear!

Pinero, Arthur Wing, The Amazons, William Heinemann, 1895, pp. 3-12.