ACT III
(SAME AS ACT I)
[_TIM, SELINA and LORD WILLIAM._
LORD WILLIAM: Tim! Who was it?
TIM: It was Mrs. Martineau who spread the story.
SELINA: Viper.
TIM: I should like to gag her with thistles.
SELINA: Have you seen her?
TIM: I met her in the street.
LORD WILLIAM: I trust you did not cut her. It is better to hear what
people have to say first, then you can cut them afterwards with all the
more reason.
TIM: I am afraid I told her what I thought about her.
LORD WILLIAM: What did she say?
TIM: She said that of course she did not believe Ann’s story, but that it
was so interesting that Ann should have cared enough for Jordan to invent
it.
SELINA: Brute!
TIM: Afterwards, when she was really angry, she remarked that she had
been sure that we would all like to feel that the world had been able to
benefit by this wonderful story of Ann’s unworldliness and high sense of
friendship, as these qualities are so rarely seen and still more rarely
believed in.
SELINA: I can hear her saying it.
LORD WILLIAM: Have you seen Ann?
TIM: No, I only came an hour ago.
LORD WILLIAM: It’s all very trying.
TIM: It is having a saint like Ann discussed at all that makes one so
sick. It is like seeing people without religion in a church.
SELINA: I wouldn’t mind so much if they knew Ann. She is a miracle no one
can deny.
TIM: What line does Ninian take?
SELINA: At last Ninian’s qualities are coming in handy. He is incredibly
grand, and, of course, it comes quite naturally to him. He is prepared
to horse-whip anyone. He talks about “my wife.” He does not, of course,
_say_ she is above suspicion. That would be to cast a slur upon himself.
Who was Cæsar?
LORD WILLIAM: Ninian is one of those men who believe implicitly in their
own all-conquering charm and, consequently, in the absence of temperament
of every woman who resists them. They never consider the possibility of
anyone who is not passionately in love with them being passionately in
love with anyone else.
TIM: Well, no one suspects Ann of being in love with Jordan.
LORD WILLIAM: Ah—no.
[_He obviously knows the truth._
TIM: It is wonderful of her suddenly to invent a story like that, but, of
course, I do see that it was rather trying for Ninian.
SELINA: Have you seen Mr. Jordan since, Papa?
LORD WILLIAM: Yes.
TIM: He must have been dreadfully upset at all the worry poor Ann is
having.
LORD WILLIAM: He seemed to be thinking mainly of himself.
SELINA: There are two things I can’t forgive Ann. One is her marriage
with Ninian, and the other her friendship with Mr. Jordan.
LORD WILLIAM: They would, no doubt, each agree with you about the other.
TIM: But for that Martineau woman, no one would have known anything about
it.
[_Enter ANN, looking white and wretched, she kisses LORD WILLIAM
and SELINA, and TIM kisses her hands._
ANN: What were you saying about Mabel?
SELINA: The viper.
LORD WILLIAM: That woman is a hell cat.
ANN: Poor thing! I don’t think she means it. Her tongue runs away with
her.
SELINA: Tim wants to gag her with thistles.
ANN: I didn’t know you went in for ingenious tortures.
LORD WILLIAM: Tim is a little more discriminating in his charity than you
are.
SELINA: Where is Ninian?
ANN: At his anti-Bolshevist Committee Meeting.
LORD WILLIAM: Is that bud bursting into flower?
ANN: It keeps a lot of violent-minded people busy. If “minded” be the
word.
SELINA: I had a letter from Mrs. Sidebotham—Si_de_botham ... this
morning. She wants me to organize an entertainment in the village. I am
afraid that Papa’s vulgar jokes wouldn’t do for that.
ANN: Nor would Red Pottage.
SELINA: “I’m a red rag to the Reds, so we’re all of us red together.”
LORD WILLIAM: Is it to be in aid of the organ?
SELINA: It is.
LORD WILLIAM: No one can say that I don’t know all about village life.
I’ve not forgotten my youth.
ANN: What was Grandpapa like?
LORD WILLIAM: Very formidable—arrogant, dry, autocratic, with magnificent
manners.
ANN: That’s what Ninian’s generation misses. They take themselves very
seriously, but somehow they are not in the least formidable. Just very
long and a tiny bit ridiculous.
SELINA: I still believe in a municipal solution for them.
[_Enter THOMPSON._
THOMPSON: Mr. Jordan has motored down from London. Could your Ladyship
see him?
[_Dead silence. ANN gets very white._
TIM: You’d better see him, hadn’t you? We’ll go.
[_ANN nods yes._
[_SELINA kisses her silently._
[_LORD WILLIAM stays behind a second; takes her in his arms._
LORD WILLIAM: I understand, my darling, but believe me he’s not worth it.
[_LORD WILLIAM and JORDAN meet in the door and bow, but do not
shake hands._
[_There is a pause._
ANN (_nervously_): Philip, you look so strange.
PHILIP (_with a bitter laugh_): Strange!
ANN: Set and hard, with a different voice, not your voice for me.
PHILIP: Ann, there are moments when you don’t seem to me quite normal.
ANN: I don’t understand.
PHILIP: I have come here to talk sense, not to make love.
ANN: Love is the only sense in the world.
PHILIP: In the whole of my life I have never met anyone so deliberately
blind as you are. You ignore all values except the ones you have created
yourself. Quite suddenly, on the spur of the moment, you ruin my
reputation and your own and then sit there quite calmly, talking about
love.
ANN: But I love you.
PHILIP: What in God’s name has love got to do with it?
ANN: What else has anything to do with it?
PHILIP: Your reputation, my career.
ANN: You see, they were all attacking you, saying monstrous, wicked,
lying things, I couldn’t sit there and listen. I simply told them the
truth.
PHILIP: What did they say?
ANN: They said you were frightened. At least, someone suggested that,
and then Mr. Molyneux said no, you were drunk, and that was why you had
failed the Government. And Uncle Bill told them you had been with a
woman—a woman you had picked up in the streets.
PHILIP: Well?
ANN: Naturally I denied it. I said that you had been with me.
PHILIP: And they wouldn’t believe you?
ANN: No. So I told them that you were my lover.
PHILIP: Were you mad?
ANN: Not in the least. It was the obvious thing to do. I couldn’t sit
there and listen to them telling lies about you—I’m not ashamed of having
loved you.
PHILIP: Do you mean to sit there and tell me that all this arose simply
because they said I had taken part in a drunken orgy?
ANN: How could I let them say that?
PHILIP: Good God, do you think anyone cares a damn? That that sort of
thing doesn’t happen to everyone?
ANN: I think that it matters very much for a man to fail his chief when
he has trusted him, relied on him.
PHILIP: And if I am with you, am I not equally failing my chief who has
trusted me, relied on me? Doesn’t that matter?
ANN: I think that matters too. But somehow, love is a different world—far
away beyond our ordinary lives. It makes everything else seem so distant
and irrelevant.
PHILIP: Well, I may as well explain to you that to me love is an appetite
like any other appetite. It is no better and no worse than drink, and one
woman is no better and no worse than another. At least I used to think
that. But now I realize that a temporary adventure is nothing to being
entangled in the octopus grip of a love affair with a virtuous woman.
[_ANN makes a gesture._
If you want to have children, marry. If you want to love you will have to
pay the bill, but see that it is a cash transaction. I meet you—a good
woman, a beautiful woman, a charming woman. I am attracted to you as
hundreds of men have been before me. And then, suddenly you present me
with your virtue. I am flattered, naturally, I take what the gods give
me. Who wouldn’t? And then, what happens? The woman who used to believe
in virtue, believes in love. A strange flaming thing this love, before
which everything is sacrificed, pride, discretion, the conventions,
reputation. You are blinded by it. What am I to do? I tell you things,
I warn you, I try to escape. But everything I say is like describing
objects to someone who can’t see. Gently, serenely, you laugh the
foundations of your life away as if they were irrelevant absurdities.
ANN (_in agony_): Oh....
PHILIP: And then, one fine day, in a moment of hysterical exaltation, you
pull down the very scaffolding of the building, and, sitting among the
ruins, you still smile and say: “Love is the only sense in the world.”
A child of ten could have told that I had ceased to care for you. And I
have been sacrificed on my own altar. Funny, isn’t it?
ANN: Oh, my God!
PHILIP: Well, I don’t want to waste any time psychologizing. I want to
discuss the situation sensibly. Does your husband mean to divorce you?
ANN: No. You see, he doesn’t believe that I was telling the truth.
PHILIP (_infinitely relieved_): Doesn’t believe that I have been your
lover?
ANN: No.
PHILIP: Good God—you are a clever woman, Ann.
ANN: They none of them believe it except Uncle Bill. They think—it was a
mad invention.
PHILIP: Well, you must try and make all of your friends think it was a
joke.
ANN: But I wanted them to believe it. I—I was proud of it.
PHILIP (_brutally_): Well, you’re not proud of it now, are you?
ANN: No. I don’t think that I shall ever recover from the shame of it.
PHILIP: It’ll soon blow over.
ANN: I didn’t mean that. Do you think I care what the world thinks? Do
you think I mind the scandal? It’s having loved you that I mind. That is
the shame that will never wear out.
[_There is a pause._
PHILIP: I suppose I have been saying things I didn’t altogether mean.
ANN: I don’t think so.
PHILIP: It’s no good saying I am sorry, is it?
ANN: No.
PHILIP: I should like to try and make you understand.
ANN: I understand everything—now.
PHILIP: At the beginning there are so many things. Surprise, discovery,
exploration, enchantment. You are always going a step further—a delicious
unacknowledged step—or rather you don’t go further, but you are always
finding yourself further—further and deeper. And later, when you are
tiring, there are still inflamed moments—moments of passion, meaningless
victories of the senses over the heart, which are greedily accepted as
proofs of love.
ANN: Don’t....
PHILIP: And with you there was nothing. No pride I could hurt, no vanity
I could offend, no self-respect I could outrage. You gave your whole self
to me, and therefore I was without weapons. There wasn’t anyone I could
deal with.
ANN (_icily_): Is it usually very easy to bring a woman to
breaking-point—to breaking-off point, I mean?
PHILIP (_cynically_): It can be done.
ANN: It has been beautifully done this time. There is nothing left,
nothing at all, no mess of regrets and pangs and importunities.
PHILIP: Ann, Ann dearest, don’t!
ANN (_with immense scorn_): Are you going to make _love_ to me?
PHILIP: There is no making about it. I have cared very much.
ANN: You are incredible.
PHILIP: I wouldn’t like to leave you unnecessarily hurt by foolish things
that I said in a temper.
ANN: You have not hurt me; you have emptied me, depopulated me of
everything I have ever known and believed. I shall be able to go out and
look at life and try to find out what things exist and where they are.
[_Pause._
PHILIP (_curiously_): Ann, where did you think I was that night?
ANN: What night?
PHILIP: The night of the debate.
ANN: I didn’t know. I thought perhaps that you had been frightened.
PHILIP: I _was_ with a woman.
ANN: Oh!
PHILIP: They were right after all, you see.
[_Pause._
ANN: I think I would like you to go.
PHILIP: Ann!
ANN (_icily_): It is no good my discussing it with a stranger, is it? He
wouldn’t understand.
[_PHILIP is walking up and down the room._
ANN: I think I asked you to go.
PHILIP: I hate to leave you like this.
[_ANN is looking out of the window with her back turned toward
him._
PHILIP: Ann!
ANN: Good-bye!
PHILIP: Good-bye!
[_Exit PHILIP._
[_Pause._
[_Enter NINIAN._
NINIAN: Hullo!
ANN: Is that you?
NINIAN: You do look a wreck.
ANN (_nervously_): Ninian....
NINIAN: Yes?
ANN (_she thinks better of it_): Did you have a good meeting?
NINIAN: Pretty good.
ANN (_still more nervously_): Ninian....
NINIAN: Yes?
ANN: I am afraid that what I said the other night distressed you.
NINIAN: That tommy-rot about Jordan?
ANN: Yes.
NINIAN: Hysteria, that’s what it was.
ANN: Yes.
NINIAN: You cold women aren’t quite normal. No natural outlets, so you go
and invent things.
ANN: It was just a silly joke.
NINIAN (_putting his arm around her_): After all, you didn’t need to
invent a lover.
ANN (_shuddering_): Don’t!
NINIAN: I see what a fool I’ve been to let my little prude be a little
prude.
ANN: You mustn’t....
NINIAN: Turn your face around.
ANN: No.
NINIAN: Those days are over, my darling.
[_NINIAN turns her face round and kisses and kisses her. When
he is finished, they are both flushed; her hair is dishevelled
and he is out of breath._
NINIAN: That’s what you needed, isn’t it?
ANN: How dare you! How dare you!
NINIAN: You prefer the imaginary Mr. Jordan?
ANN: If you ever do that again, I shall kill you!
NINIAN: What a little vixen you are!
ANN: I mean it.
NINIAN: My dear, seriously, you ask a little too much of life. For years
you have been worshipped from afar by reverent friends as a saint and
a statue. I joined them in my awe of the cold, good woman, beautiful
and untouched. I respected my model wife. Then, one fine day, you tell
us that you have a lover—you proclaim it with flaming passion. No one
believes you. Of course it isn’t true. You are the saint. What you say is
only the flaring loyalty of friendship. You are such a wonderful friend,
with such a beautiful, unworldly sense of the relationship.
ANN: Don’t!
NINIAN: You all think I’m a fool, don’t you? I can’t talk. I’m not witty.
I take myself seriously, and my duties seriously. Supposing some day you
discover that I was not stupid as I seemed?
ANN: I never thought you stupid.
NINIAN: Because I don’t choose to play at eighteenth-century
conversations with two ridiculous old men and one intolerable young girl,
because I have nothing to say to your disreputable old aunt, you think
I see nothing. I let them laugh at me because it is the only thing they
_can_ do; but sometimes when I am alone, I laugh at them—I, who have no
sense of humour; Ninian, your one great blunder.
ANN: Please!
NINIAN: Well, you’ve often had your little laughs against me. Now, for a
change, you and I are going to be fellow conspirators.
ANN (_frightened_): What do you mean?
NINIAN: I’m a simple man; I don’t go in for psychology. I can’t talk. I
don’t want to. It is a curtain between you and life. Your uncle, your
aunt, Molyneux, Selina, they make patterns over everything, but it
doesn’t change the underneath.
ANN: They only pretend.
NINIAN: They think they pretend, but they get caught themselves. They
thought it would be amusing to have a saint in the family. You were the
only possible candidate. In fact, I agree that you fitted admirably into
the rôle. You are unselfish and conscientious and charitable. Only you
upset their calculations by being a real person.
ANN: They are all like that underneath.
NINIAN: And you fell in love; that made you more human still.
ANN: What do you mean?
NINIAN: And one day, their artificial chatter became unbearable and you
told them the truth.
ANN: Do you mean that silly joke about Mr. Jordan?
NINIAN: Precisely. But they were so well trained that they didn’t believe
you.
ANN: I don’t understand.
NINIAN: You weren’t playing the game of love according to their rules.
ANN (_terrified_): Ninian!
NINIAN: So they pointed out to one another that you were rather more of a
saint than even they had supposed.
ANN: Ninian, why are you torturing me? Pretending to believe that
ridiculous story.
NINIAN: I have watched you for some time, my dear, and I have come to the
conclusion that you are suffering from a very dangerous disease. Ann, you
are a human being. Incidentally, you are my wife.
ANN: Of course.
NINIAN: You haven’t been much of a wife to me, have you, my little Ann?
[_NINIAN is getting closer to her. ANN recoils._
ANN: I have tried to be.
NINIAN: You have been the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, the mistress of
his household. Now, my darling, you are going to be my wife, my mistress.
[_His tone is half bullying, half insinuating. He is obviously
enjoying having her on the rack._
ANN: Ninian, you are so different. I—you—I mean I don’t know what you’re
talking about.
NINIAN: You’ll soon know, my darling. Don’t shudder.
[_ANN has got up and is moving away from him._
NINIAN: Come here!
[_Like a C. O._
NINIAN: Come here!
[_NINIAN gets up and drags ANN to the sofa, pushing her on to
her knees and imprisoning her between his two legs. With one
hand he is holding her two wrists behind her back, with the
other he is stroking her hair._
NINIAN: They didn’t know how to treat you, did they? Tim and the others?
Only Jordan knew. Women always capitulate to the men who think lightly of
love.
ANN: Ninian, you’re hurting me.
NINIAN: I’m asserting myself, my dear. Master and Mistress—that’s what a
household needs.
[_He laughs._
NINIAN: By Jove, that’s good—worthy of your uncle.
ANN: Let me go.
NINIAN: Where are those beautiful manners? Say “Please let me go, dear
Ninian.”
ANN: Please let me go.
[_NINIAN releases her. She gets up and walks towards the
window._
NINIAN: I didn’t say you might walk away. Sit there. It is delightful to
feel that we are sharing a secret—fellow conspirators.
[_Pause._
NINIAN: Where is the charming family chatter? And surely even your usual
courtesy would compel you to answer when you are spoken to.
ANN: Ninian, please let me go and wash my face and tidy my hair.
NINIAN: By all means. Make yourself pretty. I shall still be here.
[_Exit ANN._
[_Enter LORD WILLIAM and SELINA._
LORD WILLIAM: Good morning, Ninian.
NINIAN: Good morning.
LORD WILLIAM: You seem in excellent spirits.
NINIAN: I am.
LORD WILLIAM: Bolshies red as ever?
NINIAN: I beg your pardon?
LORD WILLIAM: Red as the faces of their most apoplectic opponents.
SELINA: Papa, you’re getting vulgar.
NINIAN: It is a sad thing that a man with your father’s attainments
should not have devoted his gifts to the service of his country.
LORD WILLIAM (_dryly_): I leave that to you and Jordan.
SELINA: Mr. Jordan is altogether detestable.
LORD WILLIAM: By the way, Ninian, I’ve found something out about Jordan.
NINIAN: What?
LORD WILLIAM: That night when he didn’t turn up to make his speech. You
remember? The occasion Ann made that tirade about.
NINIAN: Yes.
LORD WILLIAM: Well, it was true. He was with a woman.
NINIAN (_paling_): What?
LORD WILLIAM: Tommy Dunn saw him getting out of a taxi with a woman at
one a.m. at the door of a block of flats—flats that I am afraid Tommy
knows only too well. He’s quite certain it was Jordan because Jordan’s
hat fell off and he picked it up.
NINIAN: Good God!
[_Enter ANN, looking very pale. She has obviously been weeping._
NINIAN: Ann, did you hear what Uncle William said?
ANN: Yes, I knew.
NINIAN: Knew what?
ANN: Knew that Mr. Jordan was with a woman that night.
NINIAN: Then why the devil——
ANN: I know. I was a fool. It was a silly thing to do. It was the first
thing that came into my head.
NINIAN: Uncle William, I have insulted my wife this morning in a way that
no woman has ever been insulted before. Ann, do you think that you can
ever forgive me?
ANN: I forgive you.
NINIAN (_taking her hand and kissing it_): You are a saint.
ANN: Alas, no. You were right, Ninian. Only a human being.
[_Enter MOLYNEUX and LADY EMILY. They are all talking. LORD
WILLIAM and ANN are D. S. L. corner._
LADY EMILY: There is nothing like the country, Ann, nothing like it.
MOLYNEUX: Home, sweet home. When I am asked if I have any relations I
always say, I have some Cathcart connections.
ANN (_in a tone of desperate weariness_): Everything is going round and
round just the same, though the bottom has fallen out of life.
LORD WILLIAM: My dear, life is a merry-go-round. It never stops for you
however many things you drop. The onlooker sees you sitting on the same
painted swan, but he can’t see your broken heart unless you show it to
him. There is only one rule—not to fall off.
ANN: What is there left for me?
LORD WILLIAM: Your painted swan.
LADY EMILY: As we were crossing the park we met the vicar, who said,
“Quite a stranger, Lady Emily.” It is delightful to be able to count on
something in this world.
MOLYNEUX: Candover means a great deal to me. In the whole shifting scene
of life, here alone I find my certainties.
LADY EMILY: Selina, do you remember that little thing like barley sugar
who married a big-game shooter?
ANN (_desperately, to LORD WILLIAM_): Listen to them. I can’t bear it.
They are going on as if nothing had happened.
LORD WILLIAM: Nothing has happened.
ANN: They are just the same—just the same as they were the day before
yesterday.
LORD WILLIAM: Just the same as they were fifty years ago. Why should they
change now?
ANN: And Ninian thinks that he has wronged me, and Tim believes that I am
a saint.
LORD WILLIAM: Ninian did wrong you and you are a saint.
ANN: What was it you said? In life we don’t go from one thing to another,
but from one thing to the same thing.
LORD WILLIAM: You see, one is after all the same person. Whatever we do,
our actions are defeated by our characters.
ANN: Then this merry-go-round is a life sentence?
LORD WILLIAM: And you can’t change your swan without falling.
ANN (_passionately_): I want to fall——
LORD WILLIAM (_gently_): Listen, my dear, to what Emily is saying.
LADY EMILY:—she really was a very silly woman. Looking up with her huge
blue eyes, she said, “My husband married me for love.”
MOLYNEUX:—And I commented acidly, “So many marriages can only be
explained by love.”
LADY EMILY:—And the fool answered, “Dear Mr. Molyneux, it does me good to
hear you say that. I knew you were an idealist.”
MOLYNEUX:—And then——?
CURTAIN
Washington, _November, 1922_.
PRINTED AT
THE CHAPEL RIVER PRESS,
KINGSTON, SURREY.