ACT I
Scene:Ann’sboudoir at Candover. The butler is directing two footmen, who are piling up blankets, garments, etc.
[EnterLord WilliamandSelinain travelling clothes.Lord Williamover to fire L.
Selina: How are you, Thompson?
[Moves over to chair D. S. L.
Thompson: Very well, thank you, Miss Selina.
Selina: Has no one else arrived yet?
Thompson: No, miss. Lady Emily and Mr. Carstairs have been here since yesterday. Mrs. Martineau and Mr. Molyneux and Mr. Jordan are coming by the three o’clock train and should be here in a few minutes.
Selina: We would have been down an hour ago if the car hadn’t been suffering from asthma.
Lord William: Who is the Mr. Jordan who is coming, Thompson?
Thompson: I believe him to be in the Cabinet, m’lord.
Selina: Aren’t you sure?
Thompson: Well, in a manner of speaking, yes, Miss Selina.
Selina: Why do you always say you believe when you know, Thompson?
Thompson: My father always said to me, miss, a good servant should never presume to be sure. He should avoid conveying information as if he were instructing his betters.
Lord William: A wise man, your father, Thompson—if only people could get it into their heads that each time they are right somebody loves them less. How is her ladyship?
Thompson: Overworking, m’lord.
Lord William: What at?
[Sits settee L.
Thompson: Other people, m’lord.
Selina: Other people?
[Sits D. S. L.
Thompson: Other people’s happiness, Miss Selina.
Selina: Ah!
Thompson: Her ladyship can’t see that the worthless is the worthless.
Selina: She doesn’t try to improve them, does she, Thompson?
Thompson: No, miss—to make them happy. Pampering the riff-raff that’s what she does. Why, only the other day she was taken in by a swindler, and do you know what she said, m’lord?
Lord William: No.
Thompson: She said, “Well, it’s much better than if he’d been honest and I’d not believed him.”
Selina: Don’t you try and protect her against herself, Thompson?
Thompson: I try, Miss Selina, but then, her ladyship says: “You aren’t kind to me, Thompson,” and I capitulate. Human and mortal, that’s what we all are.
[He goes out.
Selina: (calling to him at the door): Thompson!
Thompson: Miss Selina?
Selina: You haven’t admired my new hat.
Thompson: Very neat, I’m sure——
[ExitThompson.
Selina: Funny, isn’t it, a saint like Ann coming out of our family.
[EnterTim.
Lord William: How de do, Tim?
Selina: How’s Ann?
Tim: She’s looking tired.
Selina: Is Ninian here?
Tim: He doesn’t arrive till seven-thirty.
Lord William: The others are coming by the three o’clock train—Molly, Mr. Jordan and Mrs. Martineau.
Tim: Yes.
Selina: I never can think why Ann should see so much of Mabel Martineau.
Tim: They played together in the nursery.
Selina: That’s the only explanation that’s ever brought forward for Mabel.
Lord William: She’s rather an amusing little viper.
Tim: But she stings so continuously that I don’t believe she could stop if she wanted to.
Selina: She certainly is no respecter of persons.
Tim: Some day she will sting Ann.
Selina: She really would be fond of Ann if it weren’t for you.
Tim: Me?
Selina: She’s a little bit in love with you.
Tim: Nonsense.
Lord William: And why not? An attractive, personable young man like you.
Selina: Papa, you’ve made Tim blush.
Lord William: It’s easier nowadays to make a young man blush than a young woman.
Selina: One’s cheeks can’t always respond to one’s feelings.
Lord William: Do you know Jordan, Tim?
Tim: A little.
Selina: What’s he like?
Tim: Heavy and common and on the make.
Selina: Why does Ann like him?
Lord William: One of her endowment schemes, I expect.
Selina: What do you mean, Papa?
Lord William: That Ann goes about endowing people with her own qualities. Very unfair to the poor things, of course, as they have to revert to type sooner or later.
Tim: I don’t know—if she can breathe some of her own spirit into them they must be permanently enriched.
[Mrs. Martineau,Mr. MolyneuxandMr. Jordanare shown in. General greetings.
[Mrs. MartineauintroducesJordantoLord WilliamandSelina.
Lord William: Did you come down by train?
Jordan: Yes.
Mrs. Martineau: There was a most charming man in the carriage—quite drunk. He looked round at us all and said: “I’m glad I’m not here.”
Molyneux: Unfortunately he got out at the next station, which must have taken the edge off his enjoyment.
Mrs. Martineau: Where is Ann?
Lord William: I don’t know.
Molyneux: We should see more of Ann if we could appear to her as a duty. Unfortunately, we are undoubtedly a pleasure.
Selina: You might make a bid as sinners in need of reform.
Tim: But that is just what is so wonderful about Ann. She never wants anyone to be better—only happier.
Lord William: Ann is my niece. She is, of course, a saint, but she is not a fool. No Cathcart is a fool.
Selina: Amen.
Lord William: Don’t interrupt. I was about to say something very good.
Selina: Would you like to “think it out in silence?”
Lord William: What were we talking about?
Mrs. Martineau: Thereisonly one subject in this house.
Selina: We were talking about Ann.
Lord William: Yes—but what were you actually saying?
Selina: Tim said that Ann never tried to make people good, but only happy.
Mrs. Martineau: Only!
Lord William: I remember I was about to say that in practice goodness and happiness are much the same thing.
Selina: Bravo!
Molyneux: My dear Bill, surely that is a platitude?
Lord William: Even a platitude can contain a truth.
Molyneux: But we are few of us brave enough to admit it.
Selina: What do you think, Mr. Jordan?
Jordan: I think that the truth can be found in very unexpected places.
Selina: The obvious, for instance?
Jordan: I wasn’t thinking of that.
Selina: Indeed?
Lord William: Is this your first visit here, Mr. Jordan?
Jordan: No.
Lord William: Then you know Ninian?
Jordan: I have just met Lord Candover.
Molyneux: Then you know Ninian.
[They laugh.
Selina: Ninian is first-hand information.
Mrs. Martineau: What do you mean?
Selina: That you learn all there is to be learnt the first time.
Lord William: No one can tell you anything about him. The whole truth is revealed in five minutes.
Selina: Yes, indeed. It doesn’t take a detective to know what Ninian is like.
Lord William: He is the family masterpiece.
Selina: By marriage.
Molyneux: A very inconvenient institution, marriage. Illogical when you want one thing, to have another.
Selina: You mean when you want one person to have two?
Molyneux: Precisely.
Selina: Ninian would be perfect if we didn’t have so much of him. He never fails one.
Lord William: He combines under the cover of an English gentleman—
Selina: Of a Lord Lieutenant.
Lord William: I accept the amendment, of a Lord Lieutenant; the ridiculous and the sublime.
Selina: And that, mind you, without taking the proverbial step.
Tim: He is our host and Ann’s husband.
Mrs. Martineau: Tim, you are becoming a prig.
Tim: Perhaps, but we must think of Ann.
Mrs. Martineau(acidly): Perhaps, but you think of nothing else.
Molyneux: Thinking about Ann is a delightful occupation. It is like thinking about primroses and spring and lilac bushes and blue-bell woods, all of the things, in fact, that we are too clever or too stupid to think about.
Lord William: You left out skylarks and rippling brooks and blossoming trees.
Mrs. Martineau(acidly): And red flannel blankets.
Molyneux: I should like to have forgotten them.
Lord William: Think of Molly dreaming about primroses and red flannel and you will realize that Ann is something more than a saint.
Selina: A saint who works miracles.
Mrs. Martineau: A siren, in fact.
Lord William: You should always remember, Selina, that virtue has its charms.
Molyneux: Which will be a strain, my poor child, as you will seldom be reminded of it.
Tim: Except when you are staying with Ann.
Selina: I am afraid that, however virtuous I may become, I shall never be as charming as Ann.
Mrs. Martineau(acidly): Not in Tim’s eyes.
Lord William: Let me beg you, my dear, not to regard Tim as representative of his sex. He is a knight errant. He puts women on a pedestal.
Molyneux: A gallant form of shelving.
Mrs. Martineau: He divides the world into saints and cocottes, and, as there are many who fall between the two stools, they are disposed of as “children of nature.”
Tim: Come!
Mrs. Martineau: You would be surprised, Selina, at Tim’s child of nature. She can powder and paint, languish and pounce, but, if she was never a saint and is not yet in the gutter, we are forced to accept her as a pure, wild creature, trapped in our horrible society.
[They laugh.
Molyneux: You are silent, Jordan.
Mrs. Martineau: Mr. Jordan is making a reputation.
Lord William: Be careful, you will find it impossible to lose.
Molyneux: We are a faithful people. A little late, perhaps, but true to the end. Have you ever knownan English audience to recognize a singer till she’s forty, or disown her till she’s dead?
Lord William: Remember, Jordan, one evening may stamp you as a drunkard, one mot advertise you as a wit, one adventure immortalize you as a Don Juan.
Jordan: Will one speech proclaim me an orator?
Lord William: Speeches are swallows that never make a summer.
Selina: Do you take things seriously, Mr. Jordan?
Lord William: Really, Selina, you make me ashamed of your upbringing. You mustn’t ask a rising young statesman a question like that. He might have to say “yes” and then we should think him a fool.
Jordan: Don’t worry, Miss Selina. I am brave enough to admit that I take some things seriously.
Selina: Women?
Mrs. Martineau: Woman!
Jordan: Some women.
Molyneux: The election wasn’t lost on you, Jordan; you learnt to qualify.
Selina: Do please tell us a little more. Are the women you take seriously serious women?
Lord William: Selina, you are my daughter, and in every sense of the word, my creation. I have told you before now that your cousin Ann is the only serious woman in the world. I am for the moment using the term woman as a form of praise. There are, of course, many serious persons of the female sex.
Tim: I don’t call Ann serious. She bubbles over with gaiety.
Mrs. Martineau: But she takes things seriously.
Selina: She is good.
Molyneux: She is unique. A woman we all adore, who can be described as good.
Selina: Do you adore Ann, Mr. Jordan?
Jordan: Yes.
Lord William: Well, I wish she weren’t up to so many good works. As for her virtue it is a “Trespassers will be prosecuted” signal that you can see for miles.
Selina: Papa, I think you’re very vulgar.
Tim: Ann is so radiantly uncensoriously good.
Molyneux: Ann is a damned good-looking woman.
Lord William: But she does lead a silly life. I did think that once the war was over and she had stopped nursing cholera in Siberia we should be all right. But what has peace brought us? Why, the house is positively infested with Mayors and clergymen and cranks and old maids, and when she’s tired of talking to her Socialist friends, she thinks of Ninian,plasterson the family jewels, resumes the rôle of the Lord Lieutenant’s wife and entertains the county. Disgusting, I call it.
Molyneux: William and I have never believed in entertaining the county.
Lord William: I confess I am sometimes entertained by it.
Molyneux: My appetite is too jaded to enjoy the hunting exploits of the squire or the cameos of his lady.
Lord William: And the parson is always collecting for an organ.
Mrs. Martineau: Ann is so strange; she really seems to enjoy it.
Timothy: That is because everything is dramatic to her. She doesn’t know what patronage means, so everyone tells her their secrets.
Mrs. Martineau: They can’t be very interesting secrets.
Timothy: All secrets are interesting.
Molyneux: All secrets are the same.
Lord William: The tiresome thing about a secret is that no one believes you know one till you’ve told it.
Mrs. Martineau: Ann is so patient. She can listen for hours to the laundry-maid.
Timothy: Ann is so interested. She knows that all of the romance in the world is contained in the laundry-maid’s love affair.
Molyneux: All lovers are the same. That is why I gave up being one. I realized that the only new rôle I could assume was that of a husband, and marriage seemed too heavy a price to pay.
Mrs. Martineau: And everyone knows all about husbands.
Molyneux: To tell you the truth, I wanted to keep one illusion. I was afraid that if I married I might discover that wives deceive their lovers with their husbands.
Lord William: Molly and I gave up sentimental adventures when we noticed that we were becoming sentimental. We decided to take to dry wit.
Molyneux: We are universally considered as wits, and as that reputation, so easily gained, is impossible to lose, we are dragooned by public opinion and our own self-respect into living up to it.
Lord William: You see, Jordan, a reputation is a prison.
Mrs. Martineau: And self-respect is the jailor.
Selina: What is self-respect, Tim?
Tim: The thing that makes Mrs. Martineau dress for dinner when she is alone in the country, that prevents Jordan from buying a vote, Lord William from making a bad joke——
Mrs. Martineau: And Ann from having a lover.
Lord William: Lord bless my soul, Ann has not been prevented from having a lover. The possibility never occurred to her.
Mrs. Martineau: If it did she would reject it without a pang. Ann’s moral tidiness is unequalled.
Tim(angrily): Is that your definition of effortless radiant goodness?
Mrs. Martineau: I only meant that Ann is not exactly a Bohemian. All her meals are in the dining-room. There are no trays in her life.
Tim: That is Ninian.
Mrs. Martineau: Well, she is responsible for him, isn’t she? Husbands aren’t gifts from God like one’s relations.
Molyneux: A husband is every woman’s first big mistake.
Mrs. Martineau: Which is the next?
Molyneux: Her second lover.
Mrs. Martineau: How subtle you are.
Lord William: A woman’s first lover is usually a slight caricature of her husband. People don’t escape from one thing to another, but from one thing to the same thing.
Molyneux: There you are again, Bill, always dragging in your confounded philosophy.
Mrs. Martineau: What is your philosophy?
Molyneux: It isn’t really philosophy at all—Bill maintains that life is a merry-go-round always coming back to the same point.
Lord William: And we poor fools think that we are steering our painted swans when we can turn them neither to right nor to left. Why, we can’t even make them go faster or slower.
Jordan: You don’t believe in free will, Lord William?
Lord William: I believe that one can fall off.
Selina: Mr. Jordan, do you think that this is the right atmosphere in which to bring up a young girl?
Mrs. Martineau: We shall drive you to romance.
Selina: And then what will become of me?
Lord William: You will return to us, my dear.
Selina: I can’t think why Ann has you in the house.
Lord William: I am her uncle. She believes that Molly has a heart of gold. Mrs. Martineau played with her in the nursery. Tim is a saint, and Jordan, as he told you, takes some women and some things seriously. Ann is the woman and she selects the things.
[EnterLady Emily Cathcart.
Lady Emily: Where is Ann?
Mrs. Martineau: Still at her Red Cross meeting.
Lord William: Emily, as a maiden lady of immaculate reputation——
Molyneux: Remember you are speaking of your sister, Bill.
Lady Emily: Molly, you are taking away my character.
Molyneux(gallantly): I am too modest to hope to succeed where so many have failed.
Lord William: I was about to ask my sister, before Molly interrupted with the rather half-hearted propositions we have just been listening to—I was about to ask my sister whether she does not consider that Ann is becoming almost too much of a good thing.
Lady Emily: Too good, you mean?
Mrs. Martineau: For this world.
Lady Emily: For our world.
Tim: Ann couldn’t live in your world. It is too small. She would die for lack of exercise.
Mrs. Martineau: She will die of exhaustion if she tries to combine Whitechapel and the County.
Molyneux: I regard Ninian as the most fatiguing item in the account. He has only two topics of conversation—his responsibilities and his improvements.
Lord William: And if you boil them down, they become the same thing—his pigstys.
Molyneux: You’re a nice unselfish boy, Tim: couldn’t you kill Ninian?
Lord William: Wait a moment, Tim. This requires serious consideration. Wouldn’t Ninian’s death leave Ann even busier than she is?
Lady Emily: And she might marry someone she loved, which would be very inconvenient for you all.
Molyneux: I don’t see that we profit much by the present state of affairs.
Tim: Ann’s in touch with so many kinds of life.
Mrs. Martineau: Ann is a woman of the world.
Tim: But not of this age.
Molyneux: Ann is the only spot of repose in the twentieth century. When she sits in a chair she doesn’t fidget; when she talks to you her attention doesn’twander to someone else. When she wants to be listened to, she lowers her voice a little. I am sure that when she goes to bed she sleeps, and that when she wakes up she is refreshed.
Selina: Mr. Molyneux, you’re quite romantic.
Lady Emily: You talk very little for a politician, Mr. Jordan.
Jordan: You all talk so well, it is a pleasure to listen.
Lady Emily: What you mean is, that we are difficult to interrupt. It is quite true. But once you cease to be discouraged by finding that what you hoped was going to be a solo is either a duet or a chorus, you will soon begin to rush in on all occasions, and ultimately you will learn to force a hearing for yourself.
[EnterAnn.
[They all get up and help her off with her things, finally pushing her on to a sofa.
Ann: How spoilt I am.
Lady Emily: How tired you are.
Ann: But being with you all will soon put that right.
Lord William: You have missed a lot, Ann. Molly and I were at our best.
Ann: I hate to have missed a moment of it, but you are both always at your best.
Selina: We were all very characteristic. Aunt Emily flirted with Mr. Molyneux, and Mrs. Martineau tried to flirt with Tim; Papa balanced precariously on a tight-rope of wit over an abyss of vulgarity, and Mr. Jordan was silent.
Ann: And what did you do?
Selina: I helped them to their remarks by asking questions.
Mrs. Martineau: Selina treats everyone as if they were performing animals. Except animals.
Selina: I love animals.
Ann: It all sounds delightful. What did you talk about?
Tim: About you, of course.
Lord William: We tried to talk about other things, but you have a way of making conversation into a boomerang.
Ann: I am afraid you can’t have said nice things, or the conversation would have died out very quickly.
Molyneux: We said that you were unique, good, and yet adored by us all.
Lord William: Molly said that. Whenever anyone describes a conversation, they always repeat their own remarks.
Ann: What did you say, Uncle Bill?
Lord William: I said that as far as you were concerned, winning the war had done us no good at all, that your life was becoming a perfect slum of good works. We all feel that we are between the Scylla of Whitechapel and the Charybdis of the County.
Selina: We must tell Ninian that the County has been rechristened Charybdis. The Lord Lieutenant of Charybdis—what a magnificent title!
Ann: In reality, as you know, I am an altogether self-indulgent woman.
Mrs. Martineau: You are so charming, Ann darling, that you entangle other people’s selfishness—to be self-sacrificing is useless. The essential thing is to receive the egotism of others on deposit.
Ann: I know that you are all shamefully nice to me, and the result is that I spend the whole time with you when I ought to be talking to the vicar or calling on Lady Bootle.
Lord William: How is the dear old vicar?
Ann: Very well.
Mrs. Martineau: And Mrs. Sidebotham?
Ann: She prefers it to be pronounced Sidebotham.
Mrs. Martineau: And being very properly called Amy, she spells it Aimee.
Lady Emily: She still believes in the aristocracy. So lucky.
Molyneux: Faith is the substance of things hoped for.
Ann: Do you think she is as complicated as that?
Lady Emily: She asked me after William, saying, “Your dear brother will have his little joke.”
Lord William: Couldn’t you explain to her, Ann, that my jokes are large and monumental, and world-famous?
Ann: I don’t think she would understand. To Mrs. Sidebotham all jokes are “little jokes,”—household pets in fact.
Lord William: Personally, I prefer the dear vicar to his wife. Can’t you give me any news of him?
Ann: He is such a kind man—just as high as ever, calling the Church of England the Catholic Church, with a long “a,” and he knows that Christ was a Jew.
Lady Emily: Did you tell him?
Ann: I don’t think so.
Lady Emily: Well, he couldn’t have heard it from Ninian.
Selina: I hated him when I was a child. He always said “How arewethis morning?” And I never could abide the medical touch in private life.
Molyneux: Ann, you are very stingy of the County news, which, however much we may try to conceal it, really thrills us. How is Lady Bootle?
Ann: Very rich.
Lord William: I don’t like her wig.
Mrs. Martineau: Why do wigs always calumniate hair?
Ann: You will see them all at dinner to-morrow.
Selina: And Sir Henry Bootle will say to Ninian: “That’s a new acquisition, isn’t it?” pointing to the oldest family portrait, and Ninian will reply: “It has hung there for four hundred years.” And Ann will be wretched. Then Lady Bootle will exclaim: “What a superb emerald,” and Ninian will indicate that it was given to an ancestress by Catherine the Great, and Ann will wish she hadn’t put it on.
Lady Emily: And the vicar will say to me: “Quite a stranger, Lady Emily,” which he always says, however often I come, and I will answer: “I had meant to be down before,” and he will shake his finger playfully at me, exclaiming: “A change of mind is the prerogative of the fair sex.” And at that moment, God willing, dinner will be announced.
Ann: I think you are all very unkind, and as I am very tired I am going to shoo you all away.
Lord William(grumbling): You manage things so simply, Ann. When you want people to come, you ask them to come, and when you want them to go, you ask them to go.
Lady Emily: Why can’t you let the poor child alone? She is tired.
Molyneux: We can believe that she is tired, but we are incapable of believing that we are not refreshing.
Ann: Of course you are refreshing. It is only that I am showing absolute self-interest. I don’t want even the film of a headache to come between us after dinner.
Lady Emily: Molly can never believe that a woman is resting. He remembers that in his youth it invariably meant that she was with someone else.
Molyneux: I have always felt that instead of saying strong as an ox, one should say strong as a woman.
Selina: You haven’t read your Shakespeare. “Frailty, thy name is woman.”
Molyneux: That had a moral, not a physical, significance, my dear. I am not speaking of robust virtue.
[They are talking themselves out of the room.
Ann: Aunt Emily—will you show Mabel her room?
Lady Emily: Certainly, my love.
Ann(calling to the door): Half-past eight dinner, everybody.
Tim(in an undertone): Might I stay for a moment or two? I will be quiet as a mouse.
Ann: Tim, dear.
Tim: Please don’t think that I am going to be tiresome. I do try to keep my thoughts away from you when you don’t want them, but it is so difficult.
Ann: My dear, I need all of the reinforcements that you can give me—always.
Tim: You are so nice, dearest, that you count on my being a fool.
Ann: You’re teasing me.
Tim: I know you can’t need anything. It is horrible to have nasty involuntary necessities nibbling things out of one’s wishes.
Ann: What wishes?
Tim: The wish to behave well.
Ann: I never want to behave well.
Tim: You’ve never had to.
Ann(to herself): Oh, my dear.
Tim: I always hope that there are going to be little things that I can do for you. I don’t ask you to need things. I only long—quite passionately—for you to want some thing.
Ann: It is so complicated—I need your love and I want you to be happy.
Tim: How deliciously simple that would be. You have my love and you make me happy.
Ann: Happy?
Tim: My love for you doesn’t make me unhappy any more. It has become a sort of religion.
Ann: Tim——
Tim: My reverent adoration is without requests and without claims. I don’t want you to step down off your altar, dearest.
Ann: Tim, you frighten me.
Tim: And they think you are cold or conventional because your wonderful goodness is a steady light, because you know nothing of ugly flares of passion, which first blind you and then leave everything dark.
Ann(shutting her eyes): Oh!
Tim: It is so difficult not to be selfish when one loves. It seems somehow to make everything so personal.
Ann(looking into distance): Yes.
Tim: You don’t say “How divinely she walks,” but “Is she coming straight to me?”
Ann: Yes.
Tim: There is a feverish unreality about everything, so that you feel that even physical pain would soothe your nerves.
Ann(under her breath): I know.
Tim(has not heard her): You want to be cruel ... or violent ... or something....
Ann: Tim dear, you have never wanted to hurt a fly in your life.
Tim: Oh yes, I have. When I first fell in love with you, I wanted to kill Ninian.
Ann: And now?
Tim: Now I just want to have him killed—not by my own hand, but impersonally. You see, Ann, you have taught me that there is something unblessed about the things you do for your own sake. Does it sound priggish? I mean that now I quite honestly don’t think about how things will affect me, but how they will affect you. It has made me so happy.
Ann: I don’t deserve it.
Tim: I don’t mean that I don’t want you with every breath of my body; the whole of me is yearning for you all the time. I feel a burning wave sweep through me whenever you walk into the room. When I hear your name suddenly, it makes me feel sick and giddy and excited. If I meet you unexpectedly I am like a nervous actor in the wings, waiting for his cue.
Ann: Tim....
Tim: Does it worry you if I talk like that? I am not trying to appeal to you, or fuss you, dearest. God knows I’m not.
Ann: I know, dear.
[She gives him her hand.
Tim(kissing it): Sometimes I have wondered what it would feel like to kiss you—just once.
Ann(putting her face up to him): There.
Tim: No. I’m not going to take advantage of your generosity. It would be sacrilege. I am not an irreverent worshipper nor an ungrateful one. I am proud to be allowed to kiss your finger tips.
Ann(bitterly): Why is it the selfish people who get so much out of one? Why do we go on pouring ourselves into shallow streams? Why can’t we love the people we want to love?
Tim(simply): I do.
Ann: Tim—I wish you didn’t think such wonderful things about me. Some day you will be so shocked. So surprised.
Tim: Never.
Ann: You will find out that I am not a saint at all.
Tim: I know you are a saint. Nothing can alter that.
Ann: You have created me in your own image, giving me all your own lovely qualities. They are a divine gift, Tim. Thank you for them.
Tim: What nonsense you talk. Everyone becomes good when they are with you.
Ann: Some day you may find out terrible things about me—and then what shall I do?
Tim: What you did wouldn’t matter, anyway.
Ann(looking at him intensely): Wouldn’t it? Are you sure?
Tim: Quite sure. It’s what you are. The warm glowing light you give. It doesn’t matter into what dark corners it goes, does it?
Ann(in a whisper): I wonder.
Tim: The places it lights and warms aren’t part of the sun, are they?
Ann: But people don’t work in that magnificent way. They select their just and their unjust. What human being is impartial?
Tim: You are, very nearly. You make everyone happy.
Ann: I don’t! My God—I don’t.
Tim: How I used to curse your marriage to Ninian. I do still in a way—and yet I am glad—selfishly glad, perhaps, that you have never been in love, that no hellish divine unrest has wrought havoc in your heart—that you are always there, serene and luminous and tender and whole.
Ann(wonderingly): Do you really think I am like that?
Tim: Yes. Not a searchlight, or a lamp, but sunshine out of doors.
Ann: My dear, I am a nervous, impatient, hungry, selfish creature.
Tim: You are a wicked woman, to fish after all the divine things I have been saying to you.
Ann: Tim, you spoil me.
Tim(seizing her shoulders): I’d love to spoil you, all day, every day, all of the time. I’m sorry, Ann. I’mbeing rough and uncontrolled, and worrying you. Forgive me.
Ann: Forgive you? Tim dear, you are an angel, and I am a very ordinary woman, and so tired.
Tim: Bless you.
[Timtiptoes out of the room.
[There is a pause. ThenJordanenters quietly, shutting the door behind him.
Ann: Philip!
[Jordanwalks to the window.
Ann: Darling, you haven’t kissed me.
Philip: Oh, I am thinking of something else, and kisses have nothing to do with it.
Ann: I don’t understand.
Philip: Women never do.
Ann: For God’s sake, don’t generalize—it sounds so cheap.
Philip: It’s my platform training.
Ann: You’re so strange to-day—is anything the matter?
Philip: Nothing and everything.
Ann: Are you angry with me?
Philip: No.
Ann: I am sorry if I was snappy.
[There is a pause.
Ann: In twenty minutes Ninian will be back from the station, the dressing-gong will ring, and I shall have to leave you. Oh, I wish there weren’t a clock in my heart telling me that time is running away.
Philip: It is half-past seven now.
Ann: All those lovely precious moments when I have you to myself ... don’t let them be empty moments, Philip. Think of all the agonizing happiness that we can fill them with.
Philip: Why do you always want things at fever pitch?
Ann: I don’t, but each time I am with you my love is like a child being born. It tears me to bits. And then there comes a moment of pure ecstasy and forgetfulness, and my life ceases to exist, and there is no time, and everything is simple.
Philip: My dear child, your nerves are out of order.
Ann: I’m sorry, darling. Youdohate me to be what you call fanciful, don’t you?
Philip: Yes.
Ann: I’ll be just what you like. So good and sober and matter-of-fact if you’ll only smile.
Philip: One can’t always smile.
Ann: I can never help it when I’m with you. Smiles seem to flutter about my lips like butterflies. But sometimes I can’t help thinking—in an hour he’ll be gone, in ten minutes he’ll be gone. And then when people come into the room, I try to shut them out of my consciousness and imagine I am in your arms. Do you never do that?
Philip: No.
Ann: First I feel one arm around me, then the other.... I think of each finger of your hand and the features of your face getting closer and closer till they merge into my face, and your lips creeping about covering every bit of me with kisses—my neck, my eyes, my lips. And then I look up dazed and radiant and see some old man talking to me about the Tariff. Do you never do that?
Philip: No.
Ann: You are dreadfully wanting me to be sensible, aren’t you?
Philip: Yes.
[There is a pause.
Ann(nervously): Do Uncle Bill and Mr. Molyneux get on your nerves?
Philip: No.
Ann: They have hearts of gold, really.
Philip: Your universe is entirely populated by saints, and sinners who sin in order to become still greater saints.
[There is a pause.
Ann: Were you in your constituency yesterday?
Philip: Yes.
Ann: Did you make a speech? Was it a good meeting?
Philip: Fairly.
[There is another pause.Annis crying silently.
Philip: What the devil is the matter now?
Ann: I don’t understand.
Philip: So you have already observed.
Ann: It’s dreadful. Why, we can’t even talk any more.
Philip: That does indeed put me in a unique position. Someone a Cathcart can’t talk to.
Ann: I can’t bear it. What have I done? Don’t you love me any more? Don’t I even amuse you?
Philip: I don’t know.
Ann: You see, I haven’t ever loved anyone before. I suppose I am clumsy—I can’t play it as a game, giving little bits of myself to make you want more. I don’t know how to.
Philip: An end was bound to come sooner or later, wasn’t it?
Ann: But I don’t see. How can there be an end? I belong to you—all of me—always. Philip, my beloved, my lover.
Philip(bitterly): How surprised they would be.
Ann: Philip, you are teasing me, aren’t you? You’re testing me? You want to see how much I care. It will always be so easy for you to hurt me, dear heart—too easy to be amusing.
[Philipis sitting on the sofa beside her and she is stroking his face.
Ann: But then, there is nothing difficult left, is there? Because it is just as easy—terribly easy—to make me happy.
Philip: Ann, haven’t you ever thought that love affairs don’t last for ever?
Ann: I have never thought of love affairs; I have only thought of love—which means you—and you, which means life.
Philip: You haven’t learnt much from your uncle and aunt, have you?
Ann: It makes me so dreadfully sad when I hear them, because I know—you have taught me—that they don’t understand life.
Philip: Suppose that they are right? They are careless and care-free, and courageous and clear-eyed, and old and young—why shouldn’t they be right?
Ann: They have never loved.
Philip: A hundred times.
Ann: It is the same thing.
[She is looking into his face.
Philip(more gently): What do you want?
Ann: I want to be kissed—to be kissed better, as we said in the nursery.
Philip: Where does it hurt?
Ann: It doesn’t hurt when you ask me.
Philip: Baby!
Ann: Beloved!
[Philipkisses her. Pause. Her face is buried on his shoulder.
Ann: Philip....
Philip: Yes?
Ann(happily): Why did you frighten me? It was wicked and cruel.
Philip: This is an impossible situation.
Ann(drowsily gay): Don’t talk business.
Philip: We can’t go on like this for ever.
Ann: We can’t help going on like this.
Philip: And if your husband finds out?
Ann(doubtfully): Perhaps he would divorce me; then we could marry.
Philip: How could I marry you?
Ann(still gay): Do members of Parliament never marry?
Philip: Ann, how can you be so exasperating?
Ann: Did she threaten him with respectability? It was a shame.
Philip: Of all the contrary little devils....
Ann: Philip, I’ve made you laugh.... Oh, I’m so happy. Do you know that ten minutes ago I thought I should never make you laugh again?
Philip: Ann, get up.
[Anngets up.
Philip: Let me look at you. Ann—you are a beautiful woman.
Ann: So I’ve been told.
Philip: Ann, come here.
[Annapproaches him gingerly.Philipcrushes her in his arms.
Ann: Philip, you’re hurting me!
Philip(passionately): I want to hurt you.
[Philipis pushing back her hair with one hand, and with the other he holds her at arm’s length. Very brutally he crushes her against himself, and then pushes her away again. Her hair is coming down and her lip is bleeding. At last he releases her and walks away with his back to her.Anntremulously follows him and puts her hand on his arm.Philipturns.
Ann: Philip, you doloveme, don’t you?
Philip(in a hard voice): I wonder.
Curtain