(quietly)
I suppose saying one’s prayers does seem eccentric to you, Aunt Harriet?
My dear Hester, considering you’d only just finishedoneservice...
(who has not noticed the look on her sister’s face)
Well, Aunt Harriet, who was right?
Hush, Janet!
(gaily)
My dear mother, what on earth is there to “hush” about? And what on earth is there to keep Hester in church half an hour after service is over, if it’s not what I told you?
What do you mean?
Nothing, dear. Come and give me a kiss.
[Pulling her towards her.
HESTER {repulsing her roughly)
I won’t. Leave me alone, Janet. What has she been saying about me, mother? I insist on knowing.
Nothing, dear. Only some nonsense about you and Mr. Brown. Janet is always talking nonsense.
Yes, Hester. About you and Mr. Brown.YourMr. Brown. Confess he has asked you to marry him as I said?
(slowly)
Mr. Brown is engaged to be married to Agatha Bulstead. He told me so this evening after service.
He told you!
Yes. He asked me to congratulate him.
The little wretch!
To Agatha Bulstead? That’s the plain one, isn’t it?
The third one. Yes.
The plain one! Good heavens, it oughtn’t to be allowed. The children will be little monsters.
So that’s why you were so long at church?
Yes. I was praying that they might be happy.
Poor Hester!
Are you disappointed, dear?
I’d rather not talk about it if you don’t mind, mother.
Your father would never have given his consent.
So Mr. Brown said.
The littleworm.
My dear!
Well, mother, isn’t it too contemptible?
I’m bound to say Mr. Brown seems to have behaved in a very fitting manner.
You think so, father?
Certainly. He saw what my objections would be and recognized that they were reasonable. Nothing could be more proper.
Well, father. I don’t know what you do want. Ten minutes ago you were supposed to be wanting a grandson to adopt. Here’s Hester going the right way to provide one, and you don’t like that either.
What is all this about, father? What have you all been discussing while I’ve been out?
It was nothing about you, Hester.
I’m not sure of that, mother. Anyhow I should like to hear what it was.
Hester, that is not at all a proper tone to use in speaking to your mother.
(fiercely)
Please don’t interfere, Aunt Harriet. I suppose I can be trusted to speak to my mother properly by this time.
You certainly ought to, my dear. You are quite old enough.
Very well then. Perhaps you will be good enough not to dictate to me in future. What was it you were discussing, father?
I’ll tell you, Hester. Father wanted to adopt Johnny. He wanted me to come down here to live altogether.
Indeed? Well, father, understand, please, that if Janet comes down here to liveI go!
Hester!
I will not live in the same house with Janet. Nothing shall induce me. I would rather beg my bread.
That settles it then. Thanks, Hester. I’m glad you had the pluck to say that. You are right. Quite right.
I can do withoutyourapproval, Janet.
(recklessly)
Of course you can. But you can have it all the same. You never wanted me down here. You always disapproved of my being sent for. I ought never to have come. I wish I hadn’t come. My coming has only done harm to Hester, as she knew it would.
How harm?
Mr. Brown would have asked Hester to marry him if I hadn’t come. He meant to; I’m sure of it.
But he said...
I know. But that was only an excuse. Young men aren’t so considerate of their future fathers-inlaw as all that nowadays. No. Mr. Brown heard some story about me from Miss Deanes. Or perhaps the Vicar put him on his guard. Isn’t it so, Hester?
[Hester nods.
But as your father would never have consented, dear...
(slowly)
Still, I’d rather he had asked me, mother.
Quite right, Hester! I’m glad you’ve got some wholesome feminine vanity left in your composition. And you’d have said “yes,” like a sensible woman.
Oh, you’re always sneering!
Yes. But I’mgoing, Hester,going! That’sgreat thing! Keep your eyes fixed steadily on that and you’ll be able to bear anything else. That reminds me.(Goes to door, l., and calls loudly into the hall.)Johnny! Johnny!
Really, Janet!
Oh, I forgot. It’s not genteel to call into the passage, is it? I ought to have rung. I apologise, Aunt Harriet.(Calls again)Johnny!
Why are you calling Johnny?
To tell him to put on his hat and coat, mother dear. I’m going to the station.
You’re going to-night?
Yes, father, to-night. I’ve done harm enough down here. I’m going away.
(entering l.)
Do you want me, Mummie?
Yes. Run and put on your things and say goodbye to Cook and Ellen and tell Robert to put in the pony. Mother’s going back to London.
Are we going now, Mummie?
(nods)
As fast as the train can carry us. And tell Ellen to lock my trunk for me and give you the key. Run along.
[Exit Johnny, l.
Lock your trunk! But you’ve notpacked?
Oh yes, I have. Everything’s packed, down to my last shoelace. I don’t know how often I haven’t packed and unpacked during the last five days.
(astonished and hurt)
You meant to leave us then, Janet? You’ve beenwantingto leave us all the time?
Yes, mother. I’ve been wanting to leave you. I can’t stay here any longer. Brendon stifles me. It has too many ghosts. I suppose it’s your ridiculous De Mullins.
Janet!
I know, father. That’s blasphemy, isn’t it? But I can’t help it. I must go. I’ve been meaning to tell you every day for the last four days, but somehow I always put it off.
Understand me, Janet. If you leave this house to-night you leave it for ever.
(cheerfully)
All right, father.
(growing angrier)
Understand, too, that if you leave it you are never to hold any communication either with me or with any one in it henceforward. You are cut off from the family. I will never see you or recognize you in any way, or speak to you again as long as I live.
(astonished)
My dear father, why are you so angry? Is there anything so dreadful in my wanting to live in London instead of in the country?
(getting more and more excited)
Why am I angry! Why am I...!
Sh! Hugo! You mustn’t excite yourself. You know the doctor said...
Be quiet, Jane!(turning furiously to Janet)Why am I angry! You disgrace the family. You have a child, that poor fatherless boy....
(quietly)
Oh come, I could have got along quite well without a father if it comes to that. And so could Hester.
Janet!
Well, mother, what has father ever done for Hester or me except try and prevent us from doing something we wanted to do? Hester wanted to marry Mr. Brown. Father wouldn’t have allowed her. He’s not genteel enough to marry a De Mullin. I want to go back to my shop. Father objects to that. That’s not genteel enough for a De Mullin either. Well, hang all the De Mullins, say I.
(furious)
I forbid you to speak of your family in that way-ofmyfamily! I forbid it! It is an outrage. Your ancestors were honourable men and pure women. They did their duty in the position in which they were born, and handed on their name untarnished to their children. Hitherto our honour has been unsullied. You have sullied it. You have brought shame upon your parents and shame upon your son, and that shame you can never wipe out. If you had in you a spark of human feeling, if you were not worthless and heartless you would blush to look me in the face or your child in the face. But you are utterly hardened. I ought never to have offered to receive you back into this house. I ought never to have consented to see you again. I was wrong. I regret it. You are unfit for the society of decent people. Go back to London. Take up the wretched trade you practise there. It is what you are fit for.
That’s exactly what I think, father. As we agree about it why make such a fuss?
(furious)
Janet....
Father, don’t argue with her. It’s no use.(solemnly)Leave her to God.
Hester, Hester, don’t deceive yourself. In your heart you envy me my baby, and you know it.
(indignant)
I do not.
You do. Time is running on with you, my dear. You’re twenty-eight. Just the age that I was when I met my lover. Yes, my lover. In a few years you will be too old for love, too old to have children. So soon it passeth away and we are gone. Your best years are slipping by and you are growing faded and cross and peevish. Already the lines are hardening about your mouth and the hollows coming under your eyes. You will be an old woman before your time unless you marry and have children. And what will you do then? Keep a lap-dog, I suppose, or sit up at night with a sick cockatoo like Miss Deanes. Miss Deanes! Even she has a heart somewhere about her. Do you imagine she wouldn’t rather give it to her babies than snivel overpoultry?No, Hester, make good use of your youth, my dear. It won’t last always. And once gone it is gone for ever.(Hester bursts into tears.)There, there, Hester! I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to have spoken like that. It wasn’t kind. Forgive me.(Hester weep more and more violently.)Hester, don’t cry like that. I can’t bear to hear you. I was angry and said more than I should. I didn’t mean to vex you. Come, dear, you mustn’t give way like that or you’ll make yourself ill. Dry your eyes and let me see you smile.(Caressing her. Hester, who has begun by resisting her feebly, gradually allows herself to be soothed.)That’s better! My dear, what a sight you’ve made of yourself! But all women are hideous when they’ve been crying. It makes their noses red and that’s dreadfully unbecoming.(Hester sobs out a laugh). No. You mustn’t begin to cry again or I shall scold you. I shall, really.
(half laughing, half crying hysterically)
You seem to think every woman ought to behave as shamefully as you did.
(grimly)
No, Hester. I don’t think that. To do as I did needs pluck and brains—and five hundred pounds. Everything most women haven’t got, poor things. So they must marry or remain childless. You must marry—the next curate. I suppose the Bulsteads will buy Mr. Brown a living as he’s marrying the plainest of the daughters. It’s the least they can do. But that’s no reason whyIshould marry unless I choose.
Well, I’ve never heard of anything so disgraceful. I thought Janet at least had the grace to be ashamed of what she did!
(genuinely astonished)
Ashamed? Ashamed of wanting to have a child? What on earth were women created for, Aunt Harriet, if not to have children?
MRS. CLOUSTON Tomarryand have children.
(with relentless logic)
My dear Aunt Harriet, women had children thousands of years before marriage was invented. I dare say they will go on doing so thousands of years after it has ceased to exist.
Janet!
Well, mother, that’s how I feel. And I believe it’s how all wholesome women feel if they would only acknowledge it. Iwantedto have a child. I always did from the time when I got too old to play with dolls. Not an adopted child or a child of some one else’s, but a baby of my very own. Of course I wanted to marry. That’s the ordinary way a woman wants to be a mother nowadays, I suppose. But time went on and nobody came forward, and I saw myself getting old and my chance slipping away. Then I met-never mind. And I fell in love with him. Or perhaps I only fell in love with love. I don’t know. It was so splendid to find some one at last who really cared for me as women should be cared for! Not to talk to because I was clever or to play tennis with because I was strong, but to kiss me and to make love to me! Yes! To make love to me!
(solemnly)
Listen to me, my girl. You say that now, and I dare say you believe it. But when you are older, when Johnny is grown up, you will bitterly repent having brought into the world a child who can call no man father.
(passionately)
Never! Never! That I’m sure of. Whatever happens, even if Johnny should come to hate me for what I did, I shall always be glad to have been his mother. At least I shall have lived. These poor women who go through life listless and dull, who have never felt the joys and the pains a mother feels, how they would envy me if they knew! If they knew! To know that a child is your very own, is a part of you. That you have faced sickness and pain and death itself for it. That it is yours and nothing can take it from you because no one can understand its wants as you do. To feel it’s soft breath on your cheek, to soothe it when it is fretful and still it when it cries, that is motherhood and that is glorious!
[Johnny runs in by the door on the left. He is obviously in the highest spirits at the thought of going home.
The trap is round, Mummie, and the luggage is in.
That’s right. Good-bye, father.(He does not move)Say good-bye to your grandfather, Johnny. You won’t see him again.
[De Mullin kisses Johnny.
Janet!
No, mother. It’s best not.(Kisses her)It would only be painful for father. Good-bye, Aunt Harriet. Good-bye, Hester.
[Looks at Hester doubtfully. Hester rises, goes to her slowly and kisses her.
Good-bye. .
[Exeunt Johnny and Janet by the door the right.
(his grey head bowed on his chest as Mrs De Mullin timidly lays her hand on his shoulder)
The last of the De Mullins! The last of the De Mullins!
(The curtain falls)