SCENE II

_Curtain rises as ANN, LADY EMILY, MRS. MARTINEAU and SELINA come out of the dining-room._

LADY EMILY: Could anything be more Prussian than a dinner-party? The same courses succeeding one another night after night, just as if cooking were regulated by staff officers. In vain one longs for mustard with mutton.

ANN (_to MRS. MARTINEAU_): What a lovely dress, Mabel.

MRS. MARTINEAU: I am so glad you like it.

ANN: You are always so beautifully dressed.

MRS. MARTINEAU: That is because I insist on having the clothes made by the French for the French; not the models designed for export purposes.

LADY EMILY: What is the difference?

MRS. MARTINEAU: When an Englishwoman or an American goes into Callot, or Cheruit, the _vendeuse_ instantly shows her the most elaborate things she has got—lace, flowers, furs and furbelows.

LADY EMILY: Why?

MRS. MARTINEAU: Out of contempt for our taste and desire to make the price as high as possible.

SELINA: And we think it must be all right because of the name inside.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Men are such bad judges of clothing! They like crude colours and they notice nothing.

SELINA: No. They say, “Kitty had on a divine dress,” and you ask, “What colour was it?” and they explain, “Kind of orange,” and it turns out to have been jade green.

ANN: And they always admire on other women the sort of clothes they deprecate for their wives.

MRS. MARTINEAU: And they talk about the conspicuous, which doesn’t mean anything. Of course it is dreadful to be conspicuously imperfect, just as it is delightful to be conspicuously perfect. But the conspicuousness is just underlining.

ANN: So few of us can afford to be underlined.

SELINA: Blue serge and black velvet are safest in all things.

MRS. MARTINEAU: There isn’t much blue serge and black velvet about you, Selina.

SELINA: No. I’m always in the worst of taste.

MRS. MARTINEAU: We all dress for women, really.

SELINA: To annoy women, you mean?

LADY EMILY: With some people all admiration is a form of envy, and all pleasure is a compound of pleasing and annoying your friends.

SELINA: How moral you are this evening, Aunt Emily.

LADY EMILY: Not moral, my dear, moralizing—it’s not the same thing.

SELINA: No, indeed. Look at Ann. She never gives us advice.

MRS. MARTINEAU (_acidly_): Only an example.

ANN: Really, the way my family talk about me—I wonder anyone can put up with me at all.

MRS. MARTINEAU: And Mr. Molyneux.

ANN: He is almost one of the family.

SELINA (_maliciously to MRS. MARTINEAU_): And Tim?

LADY EMILY: Tim does not at all remind me of my youth.

ANN: Doesn’t he, Aunt Emily?

LADY EMILY (_with decision_): No.

SELINA: Why not?

LADY EMILY: Too good.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Perhaps you didn’t like good young men, Lady Emily.

LADY EMILY: I did not, and they didn’t like me.

SELINA: What was Molly like when he was young, Aunt Emily?

LADY EMILY: Much the same. Not bald, of course, but funny—always very funny and available ... there when wanted.

SELINA: And when he wasn’t?

LADY EMILY: Yes, then too. Curiosity, not unkindness.

ANN: He has never loved anyone but you.

LADY EMILY: Fiddlesticks.... He never loved me. But with approaching senility he requires a romance to look back on. I don’t know why he chooses me.

ANN: Because he loved you.

LADY EMILY: Nonsense, but I’m honoured to play my part in this haze of rosy retrospect.

SELINA: What a lovely phrase....

[_She hums._

SELINA: ... haze of rosy retrospect.

LADY EMILY (_severely_): You manage to give everything a music-hall touch.

SELINA: Papa thinks I am very eighteenth-century.

LADY EMILY: Your father likes to think himself eighteenth-century. A halo of wit ’round coarseness.

SELINA (_who is looking at an illustrated paper_): I love dogs. They are such wonderful company and they never talk about Bolshevism.

ANN: It is a devastating topic. Everyone always gets cross and silly.

SELINA: And they go on overstating their cases until it becomes an auction of folly.

LADY EMILY: It is extraordinary how exacerbating subjects of world importance can be. After an hour of Ninian, I find myself getting frenzied about Smyrna.

ANN: Pro-Turk or pro-Greek?

LADY EMILY: I forget which. It depends on the other person.

SELINA: Yes. When we are with the vicar, who calls the Turks infidels, we are pro-Turk; and when we are with Ninian, who calls the Turks gentlemen, we are pro-Greek.

ANN: It sounds so tiring.

SELINA: It is. But agreeing with Ninian or the vicar does no good. It doesn’t stop them.

ANN: You must make Ninian show you his map of the water power of Austria-Hungary, showing that it must remain an Empire.

LADY EMILY: Ninian always proves everything by diagrams and statistics.

SELINA: He has designed what he calls a world danger map, showing Socialist danger centres in red—Glasgow in scarlet, and Munich in snow-white.

MRS. MARTINEAU: I thought it was a map of scarlet fever.

SELINA: So it is.

ANN: You are all very unkind about Ninian. He is so public-spirited and conscientious.

MRS. MARTINEAU: He is very good-looking.

SELINA: The Candovers have kept up a higher standard of imbecility and beauty than any other family in England.

[_Enter NINIAN, LORD WILLIAM, MOLYNEUX and TIM._

NINIAN: Well—clothes, servants and babies? Have they all been exhausted? Is there a character still intact?

SELINA: We have been talking about Smyrna and Austria-Hungary and the Socialist danger.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Will you show me your maps, Lord Candover?

NINIAN: I should be most happy.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Isn’t there one called the world danger map?

NINIAN: Yes ... I have tried to show in black and white....

SELINA: In red and white....

NINIAN: Selina, your habit of interrupting is intolerable.

SELINA: I am so sorry. But I had an idea.

LORD WILLIAM: How very disconcerting, my love.

SELINA: I am going to write a brochure called “The Quadruple Terror,” or “Where the Rainbow Ends.”

MRS. MARTINEAU: What are you talking about?

SELINA: The Red Peril, the White Peril, the Black Peril, and the Yellow Peril.

MOLYNEUX: Bravo.

SELINA: I have the half-penny mind. I should edit a paper called the Johanna Cow.

LORD WILLIAM: That is really a disgracefully bad joke.

LADY EMILY: Well, Ninian, did you have a good meeting?

MOLYNEUX: What met?

NINIAN: The Conservative Association.

SELINA: It should be rechristened the Preservative Association.

NINIAN: Little girls should be seen and not heard.

SELINA: I should think I could get an engagement to show myself at parties as the one Silent Cathcart.

NINIAN: My sisters were brought up to speak when they were spoken to.

SELINA: Did anyone ever talk to them?

NINIAN: If it is fine on Sunday I shall be able to show you the new cement pigsties.

MOLYNEUX: Pigs upset my digestion.

LORD WILLIAM: Model landlords exhaust my vocabulary.

NINIAN (_undeterred_): You may not be aware of the fact that pigs are very clean animals. It is only a question of providing them with water.

SELINA: Warm water?

NINIAN: Water.

LADY EMILY: How conscientious you are.

NINIAN: I was brought up with a sense of duty. My father said to me, “Ninian, remember five centuries of Candovers are watching you.”

SELINA: Wasn’t he quoting Napoleon?

NINIAN: Certainly not. In any case, he always referred to him as Bonaparte.

SELINA: Oh, Ninian, was that a nice way of talking of the dead?

LORD WILLIAM: How lucky that etiquette always prevents us from saying disagreeable things about the departed. It leaves so much more for the living.

SELINA: But Lord Candover was a pioneer. He didn’t believe in respecting tombstones.

NINIAN: I wish you wouldn’t twist my words, Selina. My father was most careful in speaking of the dead, and I am sure he would have hated to be called a pioneer.

SELINA: I beg your pardon. He only felt free to insult the immortal.

NINIAN: We are all of us immortal.

MOLYNEUX: But the fact is only known about some of us.

MRS. MARTINEAU (_to TIM. They are on stool D. S. C. and she speaks in an undertone that is not heard by the rest of the party_): What is the matter with Ann?

TIM: Is anything the matter?

MRS. MARTINEAU: She’s been so moody lately.

TIM: She overworks.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Every time I see Ninian I realize that marriage to him was the only adequate punishment for marrying him.

TIM: He is very good-looking.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Why did Ann do it?

TIM: She was very young.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Youth is an excuse for doing something foolish, not for doing something suitable.

TIM: I don’t suppose that the worldly side of the thing ever struck her.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Then it was pure bad taste.

TIM: She was probably in love with love and he was its first representative.

MRS. MARTINEAU: And when the romance wore off there was fifty thousand a year left.

TIM: I don’t think that is a very nice thing to say.

MRS. MARTINEAU: How you adore her.

TIM: Everyone does.

SELINA: Ninian, have you ever thought of becoming a Mayor?

NINIAN: Mayor? Mayor of what?

SELINA: It wouldn’t matter. Any town would do. Papa, wouldn’t Ninian make an excellent Mayor?

LORD WILLIAM: I really can’t say, my dear. I’ve never seen one.

SELINA: Ann knows lots. She adores them.

MOLYNEUX: In that case it would be quite proper that her husband should join the company.

LADY EMILY: Ann, how silent you are.

ANN: I was always the most silent of the Cathcarts, but even that is enough to get me the reputation of a chatterbox outside the family circle.

NINIAN: Uncle William, I am very glad you should be here, as I am thinking of starting a league for combating budding Bolshevism in this country. Your active help would be invaluable to me.

LORD WILLIAM: Molly and I are too old to see red.

MOLYNEUX: And being autocrats ourselves we approve of Lenin.

LORD WILLIAM: I suppose you feel bound to fight the only people who hate liberty more than you do.

NINIAN: I don’t understand. Education is at the bottom of all the mischief; teaches the people discontent and damned little else. What does a working-man need to know except how to do an honest day’s work and watch his cricket or his football on a Saturday? As a landlord I regard my tenants as my children, and I know them well enough to know that good old English ale and good old English sport mean a damned sight more to them than cheap editions of the classics. Being educated above their station, that’s what they are.

TIM: That would not teach them much.

NINIAN: I don’t know what you mean.

SELINA: I have often heard you say yourself, Ninian, that the only thing a gentleman need learn is how to play the game—which, by the way, he ought to be born knowing.

TIM: In case of accidents there’s Eton.

NINIAN: Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

SELINA: But _Hamlet_ wasn’t written there.

LORD WILLIAM: I always find it so difficult to write out of doors. However still the day, there’s always enough breeze to blow the paper about.

NINIAN: I don’t see what that has to do with education.

MRS. MARTINEAU: It all comes from your anti-Bolshevist League.

ANN: Don’t let’s talk politics.

SELINA: I am going to write a song for Ninian to sing with the refrain: “I’m a red rag to the Reds, so we’re all of us red together.” It will be called the Red Pottage.

LORD WILLIAM: Selina, don’t you think you could write a revue? Then Molly and I could get off some of our vulgarer jokes.

SELINA: What a good idea! Then, when you want to say something really outrageous, you need only make a note of it, and we will use it in _Whispers_.

MRS. MARTINEAU: What do you say, Selina?

SELINA: I am going to write a revue called _Whispers_ as a lightning conductor for papa’s vulgarer jokes.

NINIAN: Why _Whispers_?

SELINA: Because it sounds so indiscreet. Haven’t you noticed that no one ever listens until one drops one’s voice?

NINIAN: I should have thought it was easier to hear people who raised their voices.

SELINA: Don’t you see? Then one doesn’t want to hear them.

NINIAN: You are all too clever for me. But I really don’t know where it leads you to.

MRS. MARTINEAU: It has made Lord William and Mr. Molyneux the two most sought-after men in London.

LORD WILLIAM: It has helped Emily to avoid marriage and enabled her to lead her own life with admirable indiscretion.

SELINA: It has made me a comfort to my father in his old age.

LADY EMILY: We have only one regret. It has not prevented Ann and Tim from being saints.

NINIAN: Ann has no temptations and Tim is indoors too much.

[_He caresses ANN’S hair and she shudders a little._

MOLYNEUX: And it is delightful just being ourselves.

LORD WILLIAM: How is the dear vicar—still pro-Semite?

ANN: What a memory you’ve got, Uncle Bill.

MOLYNEUX: And my friend, Mrs. Sidebotham?

LADY EMILY: Si_de_botham, please.

ANN: She told me that you had said something very funny to her last time you met, and that unfortunately she has forgotten it, and couldn’t you remember what it was?

MOLYNEUX: A most insulting woman to think that I have a limited supply of labelled witticisms.

LADY EMILY: The last time we were altogether there was that young politician.

TIM: Jordan?

LADY EMILY: Yes, that’s the man.

SELINA: Do you remember how we teased him?

TIM: I only remember your asking him if he took things seriously.

SELINA: It was a delicate way of suggesting that he took himself seriously.

LORD WILLIAM: That was abundantly clear without any hint from you, my dear.

MOLYNEUX: He certainly didn’t fit into our airy conversation.

SELINA: He was like a porpoise among gold fish.

LORD WILLIAM: But we agreed that it was a mistake to waste malice on the dead.

ANN (_with a muffled cry_): The dead?

LORD WILLIAM: His reputation has come to an untimely end. He is, however, I believe, in excellent health.

LADY EMILY: What did his reputation die of?

LORD WILLIAM: Guess.

MOLYNEUX: I suggest drink.

NINIAN: He was never quite a gentleman.

SELINA: Do gentlemen always have strong heads?

MOLYNEUX: They sometimes have a good wine.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Was that it? Do tell us about it. Did he get very drunk?

SELINA: As Ninian would say, he couldn’t carry his liquor like a gentleman.

MOLYNEUX: Nor can most gentlemen.

MRS. MARTINEAU: But he can’t have ruined himself so quickly for such a common failing.

MOLYNEUX: Shall we assume that he drugged?

LADY EMILY: Or gambled?

SELINA: Another gentlemanly vice.

MOLYNEUX: We can pretend, if you prefer it, that he lost his temper when he lost, and crowed when he won.

MRS. MARTINEAU: I suggest a woman.

LADY EMILY: What sort of woman shall we have—a poor victim, or a common vampire?

SELINA: Let us have both—the one to prove him a villain, and the other a fool.

MOLYNEUX: Why are you so vindictive?

SELINA: Because I was so much bored. “I am brave enough to admit, Miss Selina, that I take some things seriously.”

NINIAN: The best thing about him.

MRS. MARTINEAU: But even with all the details that we have supplied, I don’t see how he lost his reputation as a politician.

LADY EMILY: It is probably only a temporary eclipse. No one’s political career is ever over.

LORD WILLIAM: If you will allow me to get in a word edgeways, I will tell you the whole story. It was last night—I heard all about it at my Club at lunch to-day—Jordan had promised to make a most important speech. The Prime Minister, depending on him, left the House, but when the time came he was nowhere to be found. The situation was critical, and the Government only just squeaked through. So you see his position in his party isn’t very rosy for the moment.

NINIAN: Probably it was cowardice, thought the ship was sinking.

MRS. MARTINEAU: But where was he?

LORD WILLIAM: With a woman.

MRS. MARTINEAU: What sort of a woman?

LORD WILLIAM: A woman he had picked up.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Where?

LORD WILLIAM: I really don’t know one street from another.

MOLYNEUX: There isn’t very much variety.

LORD WILLIAM: Jordan wasn’t the sort of man to get as far even as a circus. Now in my day it wasn’t etiquette to begin lower than a circus-rider.

MOLYNEUX: We didn’t know what economy meant.

LORD WILLIAM: If Jordan was drunk he was probably quite right to pick without choosing. At the time he could tell nothing, and by morning his purse must have been his sole criterion.

ANN (_who has been listening to the conversation with ever-increasing anguish and now rises_): It’s not true!

[_There is a dead silence._

ANN: It is a wicked shameful lie.

LORD WILLIAM: There is our little Ann up in arms to defend her friends. Very laudable, very characteristic. Nothing but saints in your world, eh, Ann?

ANN (_trembling with passion_): Don’t you believe me?

MRS. MARTINEAU: Where was he then?

ANN: Do you want to know where he was? If you want to—I’ll tell you. He _was_ with a woman—he was with me.

MRS. MARTINEAU: And may one ask why he was with you at such a critical moment in his career?

ANN: Why?

MRS. MARTINEAU: Did you have a headache, dear? Was that what made him run round at the crucial moment in the Debate?

SELINA: Fancy Mr. Jordan forgetting _himself_.

MRS. MARTINEAU: How did you let him know, darling, that you needed him so badly?

SELINA: Did he just come round and say, “You wanted me; here I am?” How delightfully romantic.

MRS. MARTINEAU: He clearly must have said, “They call me a statesman, rather let it be said of me, ‘He was a friend!’”

SELINA: “I had not loved these, dear, so much—” No, that is the wrong way round, isn’t it?

ANN: You don’t understand. He——

LORD WILLIAM: Your little story is not good, etc.

NINIAN: I seem to recollect that the division took place at two in the morning.

MRS. MARTINEAU: Tut, tut, Ann, the early hours of the morning! Devoted to friendship!

ANN: Yes. I don’t know at what time they wanted him to speak, but he was with me. He is my lover.

LADY EMILY: Ann, dearest, you’re mad.

LORD WILLIAM: Ann, you’re joking.

NINIAN: Do you think you are going to make us believe a yarn like that?

MRS. MARTINEAU: Tim’s Madonna Jordan’s mistress?

ANN: It’s true.

[_She is almost in tears._

NINIAN: Really, Ann, it’s bad enough to have friends like that, but this hysterical self-sacrifice business is preposterous.

MOLYNEUX: My dear child, you should remember that Mrs. Martineau always believes the worst on principle.

ANN: But I can prove to her that it’s true, that he wasn’t drunk or—with someone like that.

NINIAN: Don’t be absurd. By the worst, Molyneux means your assertion that Jordan was your lover. If that story got about, someone who didn’t know you might believe it.

ANN (_quite calmly_): It’s true.

LORD WILLIAM: It is delightful to know anyone as innocent as you are, Ann. To sit there deliberately and tell us a fifth-rate politician is your lover! Even we did not think you as ignorant of the usages of _La Vie Galante_.

ANN: Don’t you see it is not a question of _la vie galante_? It is a question of love.

NINIAN: How dare you talk about love? You damned cold——

LADY EMILY: Ninian!

NINIAN: I beg your pardon.

MOLYNEUX: Dear little Ann, thinking that women with lovers use their liaisons as alibis for politicians.

SELINA: Ann, how do you keep so innocent?

MRS. MARTINEAU: Tell us your secret!

ANN: It is a secret you none of you know.

[_She bursts into tears._

NINIAN: Wives should have no secrets from their husbands.

[_He strikes a match._

CURTAIN