What Happens

Ferdinand De Levis, a wealthy young man from a Jewish family with origins in commerce, is staying with Charles Winsor at his country house, Meldon Court when he has almost £1,000 in cash stolen from his bedroom one evening. He goes to Winsor to complain and insists on calling the police, though Winsor thinks this will cause a disagreeable scandal and says it is “damned awkward” and that this is “the sort of thing that doesn’t happen in a decent house.” Winsor’s wife, Lady Adela, informs their other guests whose rooms are close to De Levis’s: Margaret Orme, Ronald and Mabel Dancy, and General Canynge.

Winsor suggests that someone from outside the house may have committed the theft and sends the butler, Treisure, to see whether the ladder in the stable has been moved. Soon after this, Inspector Dede arrives from the local police station to investigate.

Inspector Dede goes to De Levis’s bedroom with De Levis, Winsor, and Canynge. He asks De Levis to repeat his movements when he put the money under his pillow and when he returned to the room and discovered it was missing. The Inspector fixes the time of the theft between 11:15 and 11:30 pm and says that he believes the thief entered the room before 11:15 pm and hid under the bed. After he had taken the money, he escaped through the window.

When Winsor and Inspector Dede have left the room, De Levis tells General Canynge that he does not accept this theory and is certain he knows who stole the money. He accuses Captain Ronald Dancy, the former army officer staying in the next room. He thinks Dancy must have jumped from his balcony to De Levis’s and left the room in the same way.

The General is appalled and asks him to withdraw the accusation, saying: “this is a private house, Mr. De Levis, and something is due to our host and to the esprit de corps that exists among gentlemen.” He adds that neither De Levis nor Dancy will be accepted in society if one persists in calling the other a thief. De Levis responds that he does not care. He knows that he is only tolerated in upper-class society because he is rich, and he will pursue the matter until his money is returned.

When Captain Dancy enters the room, however, De Levis does not accuse him of theft. After he leaves, he tells General Canynge that he will not make any public accusation against Dancy unless he obtains more proof. However, the General has begun to doubt Dancy’s innocence after observing a damp patch on his sleeve.  He connects this to the rain, which was coming down hard at the time of the theft.

Why It Matters

The play's title is Loyalties, and Act 1 establishes the themes of class loyalty and suspicion of outsiders. Ferdinand De Levis is a wealthy man, richer than his upper-class hosts and fellow guests, but they look down on him because he is Jewish and his family are tradesmen. Charles Winsor and General Canynge apply subtle pressure, which becomes less subtle and verges on blackmail towards the end of the Act, to forget about the theft and avoid a scandal.

In 1922, when this play was written, Anti-Semitism was common in British society and intersected with social snobbery. De Levis himself makes the point that if one of the other guests who had known Winsor all his life had been the victim of the theft and De Levis the suspect, they would all have reacted very differently.

Galsworthy depicts a society that relies on unwritten codes of behavior, in which the members regard the violation of these codes as more serious than breaking the law. Winsor looks down on De Levis even for locking his bedroom door as though he were staying in a hotel, saying that it is not necessary to do this in a private house, even though the circumstances show that this is not true.