Part 4

JOHN: You’ve been at it twenty years. Have you ever had an experience which might be called free?

COLIN: Don’t be silly.

JOHN: You’ve passed the years of adventure, and you want to settle down. So you say: “Ah, I’m wise and sane and right, and all you poor young people are wrong.”

FRANKIE (_very much at JOHN_): Do you think you know all about it because you’re wrong?

JOHN: We couldn’t very well make a worse mess than they have, could we?

FRANKIE: I’m not so sure.

JOHN: Oh, Frankie! If we sat down with a pencil and paper and tried to work out a really unclean, intolerant, silly system, we couldn’t work out a worse one than exists to-day. Do you realise that?

FRANKIE: No, I don’t.

JOHN: I could make you.

GWEN: Try--go on.

JOHN: Well--to start with ... the obvious things. (_He talks without difficulty, speaking what he has thought about._) Hundreds of thousands of girls on the streets; and an incredible amount of sex disease. One in every five infected! A million or so girls more than men doomed to a life without love. Some millions of separated people living without love and not allowed to marry again. Thousands of marriages where only distaste, and hate, remain. Ugliness, and cruelty, and intolerance about the whole subject that makes the sum of unnecessary suffering almost incredible. Does all that sound like a success? After all, we’re responsible to the next generation for the sort of world they’ll find. Have we any right to say, “Oh, that’s all right; we can’t do better than that. We needn’t bother”? Look at all the girls in the world, Frankie--one lot selling themselves to any man who can pay them; the rest brought up in a sort of prison of asceticism, as candidates for the privilege of becoming a man’s married housekeeper.

COLIN: Oh, come, John! Nowadays there are a great many “betwixt and betweeners,” as it were!

JOHN: The whole thing’s breaking up.

COLIN: Then why bother?

JOHN: The break-up is all so undirected and casual.

MARGARET: Are you so sure it is breaking up?

JOHN: Yes. Quite.

GWEN: Why?

JOHN (_definitely, and as the result of previous thought_): The Church is losing its influence.

COLIN: I shouldn’t have thought that mattered tuppence.

JOHN: It’s fundamental.

COLIN: How?

JOHN: For hundreds of years the Church has had the most enormous influence by its hold over the lives of men and women in this way. Hasn’t it?

COLIN: Yes.

JOHN: Obviously its attitude towards the whole thing is fundamental.

COLIN: Yes.

JOHN: It regards sex as sin. It’s holy when the Church permits it in matrimony; and then it’s got to remain holy, for ever and ever Amen.

GWEN: As if it did.

JOHN: They couldn’t stop people loving outside their rules; but they’ve made them ashamed of it. They’ve made sex a secret furtive thing. Well, anyhow, we’ve got _our_ chance now.

MARGARET: Why _now_, particularly?

JOHN: The Church built the system, and as a binding force it’s no longer effective. Here’s your society--in a certain mould; but the power that did the moulding, that held it together, has gone. It’s vaguely keeping its shape, at present--but it’s crumbling. It must crumble; and it’ll have to be remodelled. That was going on, anyhow. Then the war came. Everything shaken to its foundations. Personal beliefs, institutions--everything. The world’s fluid. That’s why it’s all so damnably important now.

FRANKIE: If it’s all as bad as you say, surely if people lived as Religion tells them, all these terrible things wouldn’t happen?

JOHN: That’s exactly what the Church says. “Society must be purified. Men and women must be taught not to sin.” But what they mean by purifying society is simply forcing it back under the old rules; what they mean by Sin is any infringement of those rules. What we say is: it’s the very narrowness of their rules that has made the mess, it’s the reverse side of their mistakenness ... “they make of their bodies a rampart for the protection of respectable families”--that’s what Balzac says of prostitutes. “Sacrifices on the altar of monogamy”--Schopenhauer. Prostitution means disease. You _can’t_ do away with these things by the old rules. The old rules are the _cause_ of them. Practice proves it: the countries with easier divorce laws don’t have more promiscuity; less. You _must_ tackle the business with new ideas--anyhow, it’s happening----

GWEN: What’s happening?

JOHN: Compare the world of to-day and the Christian ideal of morality; a man must love one woman and one woman only; a woman must love one man and one man only; _there must be no sex experience of any kind before or after marriage_. That’s the ideal. And it’s tremendously important to realise it is the ideal; because either you agree with it and you’ve got to strive ruthlessly towards it, or you don’t agree with it, and you’ve got to find another.

FRANKIE: Are you so certain decent people don’t live according to it?

JOHN: Yes.

FRANKIE: I’m not.

JOHN: Take any average collection of people--take any ordinary audience at a theatre! How many men do you suppose have loved only their wives?

COLIN: One or two, with luck.

JOHN: How many women do you suppose have loved only their husbands?

FRANKIE: All of them. There may be just one or two who haven’t.

MARGARET: You’re an optimist.

JOHN: Anyhow, there are more of them every day; it’s a matter of mathematics.

GWEN: What _do_ you mean?

JOHN: Decent men don’t pick up girls off the streets. They love decent women. But if decent men love decent women--where are the decent women? All over the place.

COLIN: If you had the rearranging of the world to-morrow what would you _do_?

MARGARET: I’m going home.

GWEN: Not for a minute. Go on, John. What would you _do_?

COLIN: A minute to recreate the world, John. Hurry up.

JOHN: It comes down to a question of personal responsibility. When outside rules go, inside rules have got to take their places.

GWEN: Yes.

JOHN: I mean, life was probably fairly simple to the early Victorian girl. She was brought up entirely without any sex in her life, waiting for a man to marry her. Anything else was so unthinkable that she didn’t think about it. The rules of her conduct were imposed from without. She had no decisions to make. So she didn’t worry. It’s different now.

GWEN: It is.

JOHN: She’s got no respect for the outside rules; she’s got to find her inside ones. She _is_ worrying. Whether you like it or not, she is. A great deal. Talking, thinking, deciding. Not always as her elders would like. But there are some fine people among ’em; they’ll do the devil of a lot to make a better world.

GWEN: I hope that’s true.

MARGARET: They’re claiming a good deal more out of life.

JOHN: Why shouldn’t they?

GWEN: Hear, hear!

COLIN: You’re a dangerous influence, young man.

JOHN: To you old men; I hope so; you’ve been damned dangerous to us!

FRANKIE: If Religion’s going to have nothing to do with your new world, what is?

JOHN: You’re mixing up religion and the Church. There’s got to be a religious spirit; that’s essential; I mean the spirit that makes you strive to do the best with your life. I believe some young people to-day want to live according to their beliefs with a sincerity that’s religious--anyhow it’s causing nearly as much trouble.

COLIN: A lot of conscientious consenters, that’s what you are.

GWEN: Now let’s be _personal_.

JOHN: Go ahead.

MARGARET: Must we!

FRANKIE: _You_ needn’t talk.

MARGARET: Needn’t! But I did.

GWEN: I know I’m sick of living at home; I know I’m sick of living alone. The obvious way out is to get married. But I don’t see how I can ever be certain of wanting to live all alone with the same person for the rest of my life.

COLIN: When you’re in love, you’ll know all right.

JOHN: That’s easy to say when you’re forty.

COLIN: You’re being very unpleasant to me to-night.

JOHN: I agree with Gwen. Nobody can know until they’ve tried.

GWEN: What d’you mean, “tried”?

COLIN: Oh, my God, where’s a drink?

[_He gets up to help himself to one._

JOHN: Frankie, it’s been on the tip of my tongue during these last months to ask you where you wanted to go most in all the world: and then to ask you to come with me there, straight away.

GWEN: What fun! Would you have gone?

FRANKIE: Of course not.

GWEN: I don’t see why. A sort of trial affair.

JOHN: No, Gwen. Much more respectable than that. Not a trial “affair.” A trial marriage. We should have gone definitely to find out whether we were suited for life.

FRANKIE: That would have been all very nice for _you_!

JOHN: You flatter yourself. It might have been nice for you, too!

FRANKIE: Supposing you’d taken me away and left me--where should I be then?

COLIN (_with his drink_): That depends where you went to.

GWEN: Answer, John.

JOHN: If we parted it would mean it wasn’t successful. It would be a very good thing for both of us that we weren’t tied up for life.

FRANKIE: Anyhow, you’d see a good deal of the world, John!

JOHN: What do you mean?

FRANKIE: You’d always be going away with different people all over the place.

JOHN: This is becoming too personal.

FRANKIE: You began it.

JOHN: Somebody asked me to rearrange the world; and I’m doing it. I certainly wouldn’t sweep away all existing marriage laws all at once----

COLIN: When are we coming to what you _would_ do?

JOHN: I should go all out for a much larger tolerance; I should allow certain special relationships, _within_ the present system, to be open and decent and honourable.

FRANKIE: There _is_ something else.

GWEN: What?

FRANKIE: ... It’s difficult to say.

COLIN: Good heavens! Somebody’s found something they can’t say. It must be awful.

GWEN: Go on, Frankie.

FRANKIE: Well--if you go away with somebody--and it’s a failure, and you part, for the girl it’s not just as you were, is it?

JOHN: No. I see what you mean ... it seems to me, chastity is a thing nobody has any right to inflict upon anybody else.

GWEN: Hear hear.

JOHN: It may be fine when it’s undertaken from real personal belief, but it’s not worth tuppence when it’s meant a tremendous effort of starvation that achieves nothing but starvation.

MARGARET: You know a lot of girls are quite tranquil and untouched by all this, until it’s thrust under their noses.

FRANKIE: That’s it. That’s where you’re so wrong, John. You don’t save girls from trouble, you _make_ it for them.

GWEN: Quite a lot _aren’t_ tranquil. It’s wicked to keep people from love, when you needn’t.

JOHN: Surely you have to deal with every case on its merits. When I have a daughter----

FRANKIE: When you have a daughter, you won’t be talking like this.

JOHN: I shall want my daughter to be happily married; _and this is the real answer to you, Frankie_. If you want a happy, lasting marriage, the love-making part of it has got to be successful.

MARGARET: Yes.

JOHN: It’s fundamental. Bed-rock. The rock on which most marriages split, and up to now it’s been just left to chance ... a girl must have absolutely no real emotional experience until she’s married. Her first real experience may alter her whole being, yet by the time she’s allowed that first experience she must have tied herself up for life. Now I don’t think that’s merely silly. _I think it’s definitely wrong._

COLIN: I agree with you.

JOHN: Grandpa agrees with me. I must be right.

COLIN: Yes, my child, but I think you’ve got to be extremely careful over this experimenting business of yours.

JOHN: Why?

COLIN: You’ve got the artistic temperament, God help you. Most people haven’t. The majority of ordinary respectable human beings just want quiet, uneventful, peaceful lives.

FRANKIE: Yes.

COLIN: You can just as easily wreck people’s happiness by persuading them to go experimenting all over the place, as by denying them the right to do it.

GWEN: Don’t just say “Don’t, don’t, don’t.” That’s negative ... a denial of things. We can’t live by that.

COLIN: My dear--Miss Freeman, I’m not denying the years of adventure, as John calls them. Anyhow, they’ll remain for a good many, whatever we say. But when it comes to arranging a new system, keep adventure for adventure’s sake for the unfortunate artistic people. They’ll hurt themselves. And make a song about it. But if ordinary people get into the habit of fluttering from experience to experience they damned easily lose the stability or the capacity for happiness. And undisturbed love between two people is the highest happiness.

GWEN: But supposing you don’t find it, or make a mistake the first time?

COLIN: I’m not denying the right of the ordinary person to experiment, but it ought to be for the definite object of discovering a true lover, and making a lasting marriage.

JOHN: And if you help people to find their real mates, and when they’ve made a mistake, help them out of it quietly and decently, you’ll have many more happy marriages and much less beastliness.

COLIN: Yes, I agree.

MARGARET (_rising_): Well, I’m glad we’ve settled _that_!! Now I’m going home. Good night, Gwen.

GWEN: Good night.

MARGARET (_to FRANKIE_): Good night ... don’t think me an abandoned woman----

FRANKIE: I don’t.

MARGARET: Good night, John.

JOHN: I’ll come down.

COLIN: Got a cigarette, John?

JOHN: There’s a new box on the table by the bed.

[_COLIN goes into the bedroom._

MARGARET (_at the door_): It _is_ dark.

GWEN: I’ll put on the light; it’s just at the bottom of the stairs.

[_They both disappear._

JOHN (_alone with FRANKIE_): Please ... will you forgive me?

FRANKIE: I hope you’ll find someone and be very happy.

JOHN: I hope you will, too.

[_COLIN comes back into the room._

FRANKIE: Good night, Mr. Mackenzie.

COLIN: Good night.

JOHN: I’m just going to see Margaret out.

[_He follows FRANKIE from the room. COLIN alone. GWEN returns._

COLIN: Hullo!

GWEN: Hullo!

COLIN: I’m glad you’ve come back.

GWEN: Are you?

COLIN: I suppose you wouldn’t care to come for a walk with me to-morrow afternoon?

GWEN: Yes.

COLIN: Where can we go in an afternoon?

GWEN: Anywhere.

COLIN: If I came for you in a car about ten, we might get down to the sea and back in time to dress for dinner and the ballet.

GWEN: That would be lovely.

COLIN: Will you be ready at ten?

GWEN: Yes.

COLIN: Ten o’clock then, to-morrow morning.

[_JOHN comes back._

COLIN: I’ll be getting along. Don’t come down. Good night, John.

JOHN: Good night.

COLIN (_to GWEN_): Good night.

GWEN: Good night.

[_COLIN goes._

JOHN: I wish they’d stayed. We might have had a decent talk! I’m going to do some work.

GWEN: I’m going to bed.

[_As she goes, she takes an enormous handful of cigarettes from the new box which COLIN had brought in from the bedroom._

JOHN (_noticing_): Have a cigarette?

GWEN: No, thanks. I don’t smoke. Good night, dear.

JOHN: Good night. Bless you.

[_GWEN goes. JOHN settled down in a comfortable chair to a book, he gets up to find sheets of manuscript paper, a pipe and tobacco, and throws the lot down beside the chair, and gets into it again ... his father comes into the room._

MR. FREEMAN: There you are.

JOHN: Yes?

MR. FREEMAN: There’s just one thing I want to say to you to-night.

JOHN: Yes?

MR. FREEMAN: Not a _word_ of all this business to your sister.

CURTAIN

END OF ACT II

ACT III

ACT III

DOWNSTAIRS AGAIN

_A week later. MR. and MRS. FREEMAN have just finished tea. She is sewing; he is moving about._

MR. FREEMAN: There’s going to be a first-class row in this house this afternoon. A first-class _row_.... Is he up there?

MRS. FREEMAN: I think so.

MR. FREEMAN: Having tea?

MRS. FREEMAN: It’s Florence’s day out. He has his tea down here on Thursdays.

MR. FREEMAN (_at the speaking-tube_): Hullo!... John! _Is that you?_ Are you up there!... What d’you mean “_No!?_”... I want a word with you.... When you’ve had your tea.... Yes; it’s waiting. (_He comes away from the tube._) I’ll teach him to be funny!

MRS. FREEMAN: Is he coming down?

MR. FREEMAN: Yes. (_He paces again_) ... came like a thunderbolt; this afternoon was absolutely the first I’d heard of it.... I’ve a good mind to pop round and see Frankie, or her father; shouldn’t stay; be back here before he’s finished his tea; ... a week ago; never a word to anyone; a week--I didn’t tell you all about that evening; that girl up in his room; when I went in there she was ... well, never mind--and then this morning, he walks into my office, as calm as you like, and informs me, if you please, he does not intend to marry Frankie.... And that’s not all. Oh no. Not by any means. He’s going to leave the business.... Leave it ... throw the whole thing up.

MRS. FREEMAN: What did _you_ say?

MR. FREEMAN: I’m not quite sure. But whatever I said, it’s nothing to what I’m going to say! I’ve had about as much as I’m going to put up with!... It’s such a dam’ bad influence on Gwen, too.... D’you realise she’s only been in to dinner once this week?

MRS. FREEMAN: Twice.

MR. FREEMAN: Once.

MRS. FREEMAN: Wednesday and Sunday.

MR. FREEMAN: Oh yes. Sunday. Well, twice.... Where’s she been?

MRS. FREEMAN: Out with Mr. ... Mr. ... John’s friend.

MR. FREEMAN: The playwriting feller.

MRS. FREEMAN: Yes.

MR. FREEMAN: What! Every night?

MRS. FREEMAN: I think so.

MR. FREEMAN: I ask you!

MRS. FREEMAN: He seems a very nice man.

MR. FREEMAN: Does he?! I don’t care how nice he is, when it comes to taking my daughter out six times a week!

MRS. FREEMAN: Five times.

MR. FREEMAN: I’ve had enough. That’s what it amounts to. And my foot’s coming down--pretty hard. (_He goes to speaking-tube again._) Hullo.... I want to see you; when you’ve had your tea; ... you’re not going out? very well; when you’ve had your tea. (_He replaces the tube._) I think I _will_ just look round and see Frankie; and the old man, if he’s in; shan’t stay; because I’m coming back to talk to John ... a fine old rumpus; that’s what there’s going to be; back almost directly.

[_He goes out. Alone, MRS. FREEMAN sews a few stitches; then rises, presses a bell, and returns to her sewing.... ROSIE enters._

MRS. FREEMAN: Make a fresh pot of tea for Mr. John.

[_ROSIE fetches the teapot from the tray, and is retiring with it. At the door, she is stopped by MRS. FREEMAN’S voice._

Rosie!... Is anything the matter?

ROSIE: No’m.

[_She goes out. Alone, MRS. FREEMAN sews.... GWEN comes in._

GWEN: Is he having tea upstairs?

MRS. FREEMAN: No.

GWEN: Oh, it’s Thursday.

MRS. FREEMAN: Did you have a nice lunch?

GWEN: Yes.

MRS. FREEMAN: Was it with Mr. ... Mr. ... John’s friend?

GWEN: He’s got a good many friends.

MRS. FREEMAN: Yes; but you know the one I mean--his special one.

GWEN: I lunched with Colin Mackenzie.

MRS. FREEMAN: Oh yes; that’s it: Mackenzie. I never can remember. It’s such a difficult name. Nothing to get hold of. If it was Mackintosh ... rain or toffee; _Mackenzie_ ... Mackenzie ... he seems a very nice man.

GWEN: Not bad.

MRS. FREEMAN (_rising_): I’ve ordered some fresh tea. I’m going into the drawing-room. (_At the door._) You’ll be in to dinner to-night?

GWEN: Yes.

MRS. FREEMAN: You won’t be going out at all?

GWEN: No.

MRS. FREEMAN: I’m glad.

[_She goes.... GWEN crosses to the speaking-tube, and blows into it; she gets no answer; while she is doing this, ROSIE returns with the teapot. As she puts it down, she gives a sudden little sob._

GWEN (_gently; but without surprise_): Don’t cry.

ROSIE: I can’t ’elp it.

GWEN: Would you mind if I told Mr. John?

ROSIE: If you wants to.

[_JOHN comes in._

JOHN: Hullo, Gwen.... Have they had their tea, Rosie?

[_ROSIE, being unable to answer, nods, and then sobs. JOHN looks enquiringly from her to GWEN._

ROSIE: Go on. Tell ’im.

GWEN: Rosie’s going to have a baby.

ROSIE (_utterly pitiful_): It’s about finished me.

GWEN (_to her brother_): We can help, can’t we?

JOHN: Of course.

ROSIE (_with sudden unexpected vigour; turning on him_): It’s all very well for _you_!

JOHN (_taken aback_): Rosie!

ROSIE: Standin’ there _talkin’_!

JOHN: But, Rosie.

ROSIE: It’s all _your_ fault, anyhow!

JOHN: _My_ fault!

ROSIE: Yes.

JOHN: _Mine?_

ROSIE: Yes, yours.

GWEN: Oh, John!

JOHN: Rosie, what _do_ you mean?

ROSIE: I’d never of done it, if it ’adn’t been for _you_. I’ve _’eard_ yer. _Talkin’!_... “What ’arm is there in it?” “Why shouldn’t a girl ’ave a good time?” Next time you tell her that, you tell ’er what’ll ’appen to ’er.

JOHN: ... Is he anybody you could marry?

ROSIE: ’E’s married.

JOHN: Oh!

ROSIE: I’m frightened. I am, straight. (_She stares at them, in vague terror._) You’re ’elpless; you know what I mean: you go into the next room, and it’s everywhere; you can’t get away from it. (_Her look seems to hypnotise them; they can find no words. She continues:_) It’s bad enough when you’re married, and ’ave a ’usband to look after yer; and yer mother’s pleased.... I can’t never tell my mother. I can’t tell nobody.

GWEN: You’ve told us.

ROSIE: Oh, it’s all right for _you_, miss--_you_ don’t know. You can’t do nothing. I went to a chemist w’ot ’e told me of--a long way off it was, on a tram--and they as good as kicked me out. Then I goes to a doctor; I ’as to go alone. I rings the bell, and the man w’ot opened the door, ’e looked at me--’e seemed to know; and the doctor said ’e couldn’t do nothing. It’s finished me.

JOHN: Let’s go upstairs. We’ll be quieter there.

ROSIE: I’ve got t’go and ’elp cook. That Florence is out.

JOHN: As soon as you can get off will you come upstairs?

ROSIE: Yes. (_She hesitates. Then:_) ... I’m sorry--what I said. It’s kind o’ yer; then, you’re _kind_ all right ... and if you’re a bit orf, you can’t ’elp it; I mean, you can’t really _know_--can yer?... It’s an awful thing to ’appen to anyone ... you gets to ’ate yerself.

GWEN: Oh no. (_She adds, rather lightly to help:_) After all, it might happen to any of us.

ROSIE (_fiercely_): Don’t you never let it ’appen to _you_, miss. You take care you _’as_ ’im, safe, ’e’ll marry yer, before you does anything. Me! I lied awake all last night. Throw myself in the river--that’s about what I’m fit for now.

GWEN: Rosie!

ROSIE: Well, other girls do, don’t they? Nobody couldn’t blame me then; p’r’aps they’d be sorry.... ’Ere, I must get. That old cook’ll be after me. She’s a one. Work’s something; stops yer thinkin’.

JOHN: As soon as you’re finished, you’ll come back.

ROSIE: Yes, sir.

JOHN (_gently but firmly_): Now, look here, Rosie; you’ve told us and you’re not alone any more. And we’re going to stand by you and see you safe. See? Whatever happens, we’ll see you safe right through and out the other side.

ROSIE: It’s kind o’ yer.

JOHN: ’Tisn’t. We’re just all in the world together; that’s all.... You’re coming back as soon as you can get away from cook.