Part 2

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’m being 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.

[_TIM tiptoes out of the room._

[_There is a pause. Then JORDAN enters quietly, shutting the door behind him._

ANN: Philip!

[_JORDAN walks 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. You _do_ hate 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. ANN is 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.

[_PHILIP is 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!

[_PHILIP kisses 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.

[_ANN gets up._

PHILIP: Let me look at you. Ann—you are a beautiful woman.

ANN: So I’ve been told.

PHILIP: Ann, come here.

[_ANN approaches him gingerly. PHILIP crushes her in his arms._

ANN: Philip, you’re hurting me!

PHILIP (_passionately_): I want to hurt you.

[_PHILIP is 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. ANN tremulously follows him and puts her hand on his arm. PHILIP turns._

ANN: Philip, you do _love_ me, don’t you?

PHILIP (_in a hard voice_): I wonder.

CURTAIN

ACT II

ACT II

SCENE I

_ANN, alone, walks about humming happily. PHILIP is shown in by THOMPSON._

THOMPSON: Mr. Jordan.

[_Exit THOMPSON._

ANN: Philip——

PHILIP: Here I am.

ANN: But you can’t dine——

PHILIP: No, I must be in the House.

ANN: Of course.

PHILIP (_suspiciously_): Why do you say “of course”?

ANN (_smiling_): Because I am so well trained.

PHILIP: You sounded as if you were thinking of something.

ANN: My mind was in that rare and delightful state known as a perfect blank.

PHILIP: You don’t usually say “of course” when I break an engagement with you.

ANN: You told me it was so important to be sensible.

PHILIP: I doubt if the Almighty Himself could make you sensible. It wasn’t part of His conception——

ANN: But I have always known that you ought to go more to the House.

PHILIP (_sharply_): What do you mean?

ANN: That to be young and charming and promising and intelligent means nothing compared to being on the spot.

PHILIP: How practical you are getting.

ANN: It isn’t that I am getting practical; it is that every day you seem to be becoming more and more a part of me. You see, if you are always with me, it doesn’t matter quite so much that you should sometimes be away from me.

PHILIP: I don’t see.

ANN: Loving you used to make me unhappy, but now it makes me happy—now that I am sure. I used to feel “He isn’t looking at me, he isn’t thinking about me, his eyes aren’t even straying in my direction. He is quite happy on that sofa, quite concentrated—if only he were inattentive. But he isn’t.” But now I feel “It doesn’t matter what woman he is with, or what man—his heart is with me. I don’t need any stray looks, any accidental jealousy—he means so much to me now that I don’t want him to be anxious when he’s away from me. I want him to be confident.” When you are a little bit in love you are flattered by doubt, but when you really love you only want trust.

PHILIP: You give enough trust for two.

ANN: You make it so easy.

PHILIP: Ann——

ANN: Yes?

PHILIP (_thinks better of it_): Nothing.

ANN: Did you want to tell me something?

PHILIP: One can’t tell you anything. You have the divine scepticism of all the saints.

ANN: What do you mean?

PHILIP: All saints are unbelievers. They don’t believe in realities. They don’t even believe in mortality.

ANN (_passionately_): One can’t believe in mortality.

PHILIP: You must have seen enough death during the war.

ANN: That is why I can’t believe in mortality.

PHILIP: Doesn’t it let you down, always following your hopes?

ANN: What else can one follow?

PHILIP: Anyway, if it doesn’t let you down, it must let you in for things.

ANN: But I like being let in for things.

PHILIP: I wonder your illusions aren’t threadbare by now—you use them enough.

ANN: Philip, why do you go on keeping up a silly pretence of being hard and cold and cynical and heartless? They are all such foolish things to be. People are only hard because they are frightened, and cold because they are clumsy. As for cynicism, it is so misleading; it keeps you out of touch with life.

PHILIP: That seems an odd remark for a Cathcart.

ANN: Uncle Bill and Aunt Emily aren’t really cynical; they are just a little out of tune with the sort of lives we live. You ought to think of them as delicious museum pieces. You watch Uncle Bill if somebody makes a pun—he glows—not because he very much likes puns, but because they make him feel young. It must be so sad to see the world drifting away out of your ken into a strange new century full of distorted angles and alien values.

PHILIP (_violently_): I don’t understand you, any of you—your uncle or your aunt or Selina.

ANN (_interrupting_): Selina is just very young and uncompromising—a ruthless, fastidious realist. At least she thinks she is a realist, because she can face things, but it is so easy to face things before one has ever been hurt.

PHILIP: Then there is you.

ANN (_laughing_): There is me. (_Tenderly_): Are you glad?

PHILIP (_who is walking up and down_): You are the most mysterious of them all.

ANN: I am simplicity itself. It is only because you love me that you think me mysterious. The person you love is always mysterious because you have encircled them in the great mystery of love.

PHILIP (_who is taking no notice of what she is saying_): They all think you a saint, and they are right, I suppose. You see no evil, in anyone, not even in yourself.

ANN: Philip, how can you say a thing like that? No one knows better than I do that I am riddled with faults.

PHILIP: You are practically faultless, and yet it would seem as if virtue meant nothing to you.

ANN: What do you mean by virtue?

PHILIP: What other people mean by it.

ANN: That one’s body matters more than anything else?

PHILIP: I shouldn’t have put it like that.

ANN: Nor would the other people.

PHILIP: You think nothing of having a lover.

ANN: I think everything of it.

PHILIP: You don’t mind deceiving your husband.

ANN: You know I would have told him long ago if you had let me.

PHILIP (_in despair at her blindness_): Good God!

ANN: Don’t you remember we thought that although he doesn’t love me it would hurt him?

PHILIP (_sneering_): Ninian too is like _other_ people.

ANN: Yes—once one has given one’s heart all other gifts are so small. That is where it seems to me that the moralists go wrong—they seem to think the body so much more important than the heart or the soul.

PHILIP: Moralists aren’t occupied with the heart or the soul. They are interested in the structure of society.

ANN: Then why don’t they become county councillors or politicians?

PHILIP: Because they would find difficulty in getting elected.

ANN: You look tired.

PHILIP: I am tired.

ANN: What has tired you? The things you have done or the things you haven’t done?

PHILIP: Both.

ANN: Tell me!

PHILIP (_sharply_): What?

ANN: Everything—anything.

PHILIP: There is nothing to tell.

ANN (_teasing_): You look like a man with a guilty secret.

PHILIP (_startled_): What are you driving at?

ANN (_still gay_): How should I know?

PHILIP: Well, I must be going.

ANN: Already?

PHILIP: Your guests will be arriving in a moment.

ANN: Philip, please say something nice to me before you go.

PHILIP: What do you mean by a nice thing?

ANN: Something obvious and all-embracing.

PHILIP: So you’ve reached the obvious, have you?

ANN: I have always believed in the obvious.

PHILIP: What would you call an obvious and all-embracing thing to say?

ANN: I love you.

PHILIP: Why do women always want to be told that one loves them? They must know whether it is true or not.

ANN: There may be truths that are better left unsaid, but there are no nice truths that are not the better for being repeated.

PHILIP: Do you call love a nice truth?

ANN: A respectable truth.

PHILIP: So long as you change the subject.

ANN: Don’t tease me, sweet.

PHILIP: I’m not teasing you.

ANN (_stroking his forehead_): I don’t want you to be tired or worried.... I don’t want you to have a conscience.

PHILIP: Not any conscience at all?

ANN: A preventive conscience but not a retrospective one.

PHILIP: I think it is better to worry after than before ... a sin followed by a regret is better than a blank preceded by a doubt.

ANN: It might be such a small sin and such a big regret.

PHILIP: Why do you look so happy?

ANN: I am so happy.

PHILIP: How do you manage it?

ANN: You manage most of it.

PHILIP (_showing some faint emotion for the first time_): There are moments when I wish I had managed it.

ANN (_kisses his hand_): Good-bye.

PHILIP: Good-bye.

[_Exit PHILIP._

[_ANN walks about the room singing to herself._

[_Enter LORD WILLIAM._

ANN: Uncle William, how nice of you to come early.

LORD WILLIAM: One never gets you alone.

ANN: I would always be alone if I knew you were coming.

LORD WILLIAM: You ought not to be wasting your wiles on an old uncle; you ought to be ruining some young man with them.

ANN: Is it nice for young men to be ruined?

LORD WILLIAM: Delightful.

ANN: When were you first ruined, Uncle Bill?

LORD WILLIAM: When I was twenty-one. That was, quite properly, the method I selected for coming of age.

ANN: What was she like?

LORD WILLIAM: She was a circus-rider. We did things in style in those days.

ANN: Was she pretty?