The painted swan

[3]

THE
PAINTED SWAN

A Play in Three Acts

BY
ELIZABETH BIBESCO

“People don’t escape from one thing to another thing, but from one thing to the same thing.”

LONDON
HUTCHINSON & CO.
Paternoster Row, E.C.4

[4]

Applications regarding performing rights
should be addressed to Mr. J. L. Campbell,
Regency House, Warwick Street.

The Painted Swan

A Play in Three Acts
by
ELIZABETH BIBESCO
(as produced at the Everyman Theatre, March 16th, 1925).

Characters in order of their appearance :

Thompson ( the Butler )	Harold B. Meade
Lord William Cathcart	Felix Aylmer
Selina ( his daughter )	Elissa Landi
Mrs. Martineau	Muriel Pope
Mr. Molyneux	Clifford Mollison
	(By permission of Reandean)
Timothy Carstairs	Robert Harris
	(By permission of Reandean)
Philip Jordan	Allan Jeayes
Lady Emily Cathcart	Margaret Carter
Ann ( Lady Candover )	Edith Evans
Ninian ( Lord Candover )	Frank Cellier

THE PLAY PRODUCED BY NORMAN MACDERMOTT

Scene : Ann’s boudoir at Candover. The butler is directing two footmen, who are piling up blankets, garments, etc.

[ Enter Lord William and Selina in travelling clothes. Lord William over to fire L.

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.

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 : 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?

Thompson : She said, “Well, it’s much better than if he’d been honest and I’d not believed him.”

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.

Lord William : The others are coming by the three o’clock train—Molly, Mr. Jordan and Mrs. Martineau.

Tim : But she stings so continuously that I don’t believe she could stop if she wanted to.

Lord William : It’s easier nowadays to make a young man blush than a young woman.

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. Molyneux and Mr. Jordan are shown in. General greetings.

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.

Molyneux : We should see more of Ann if we could appear to her as a duty. Unfortunately, we are undoubtedly a pleasure.

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.

Lord William : I remember I was about to say that in practice goodness and happiness are much the same thing.

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.

Molyneux : A very inconvenient institution, marriage. Illogical when you want one thing, to have another.

Selina : Ninian would be perfect if we didn’t have so much of him. He never fails one.

Lord William : I accept the amendment, of a Lord Lieutenant; the ridiculous and the sublime.

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 : Think of Molly dreaming about primroses and red flannel and you will realize that Ann is something more than a saint.

Molyneux : Which will be a strain, my poor child, as you will seldom be reminded of it.

Selina : I am afraid that, however virtuous I may become, I shall never be as charming as Ann.

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.

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.”

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.

Molyneux : We are a faithful people. A little late, perhaps, but true to the end. Have you ever known [19] an 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.

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 : 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.

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.

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, plasters on the family jewels, resumes the rôle of the Lord Lieutenant’s wife and entertains the county. Disgusting, I call it.

Molyneux : My appetite is too jaded to enjoy the hunting exploits of the squire or the cameos of his lady.

Timothy : That is because everything is dramatic to her. She doesn’t know what patronage means, so everyone tells her their secrets.

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.

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.

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——

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.

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.

Mrs. Martineau : Well, she is responsible for him, isn’t she? Husbands aren’t gifts from God like one’s relations.

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.

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.

Selina : Mr. Jordan, do you think that this is the right atmosphere in which to bring up a young girl?

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.

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.

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.

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 : 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’t [25] wander 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.

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.

[ They all get up and help her off with her things, finally pushing her on to a sofa.

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.

Mrs. Martineau : Selina treats everyone as if they were performing animals. Except animals.

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.

Lord William : Molly said that. Whenever anyone describes a conversation, they always repeat their own remarks.

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!

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.

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. Si de botham 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.

Selina : I hated him when I was a child. He always said “How are we this 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?

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.

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.

Molyneux : That had a moral, not a physical, significance, my dear. I am not speaking of robust virtue.

Tim ( in an undertone ): Might I stay for a moment or two? I will be quiet as a mouse.

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.

Tim : I know you can’t need anything. It is horrible to have nasty involuntary necessities nibbling things out of one’s wishes.

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.

Tim : How deliciously simple that would be. You have my love and you make me happy.

Tim : My love for you doesn’t make me unhappy any more. It has become a sort of religion.

Tim : My reverent adoration is without requests and without claims. I don’t want you to step down off your altar, dearest.

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.

Tim : It is so difficult not to be selfish when one loves. It seems somehow to make everything so personal.

Tim : You don’t say “How divinely she walks,” but “Is she coming straight to me?”

Tim : There is a feverish unreality about everything, so that you feel that even physical pain would soothe your nerves.

Tim ( has not heard her ): You want to be cruel ... or violent ... or something....

Tim : Oh yes, I have. When I first fell in love with you, I wanted to kill Ninian.

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.

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.

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.

Tim ( kissing it ): Sometimes I have wondered what it would feel like to kiss you—just once.

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?

Ann : Tim—I wish you didn’t think such wonderful things about me. Some day you will be so shocked. So surprised.

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.

Ann : Some day you may find out terrible things about me—and then what shall I do?

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 : But people don’t work in that magnificent way. They select their just and their unjust. What human being is impartial?

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.

Tim : You are a wicked woman, to fish after all the divine things I have been saying to you.

Tim ( seizing her shoulders ): I’d love to spoil you, all day, every day, all of the time. I’m sorry, Ann. I’m [34] 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.

Philip : Oh, I am thinking of something else, and kisses have nothing to do with it.

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.

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.

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.

Ann : I’m sorry, darling. You do hate me to be what you call fanciful, don’t you?

Ann : I’ll be just what you like. So good and sober and matter-of-fact if you’ll only 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?

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 : Your universe is entirely populated by saints, and sinners who sin in order to become still greater saints.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 : 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 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.

Scene I

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Ann ( stroking his forehead ): I don’t want you to be tired or worried.... I don’t want you to have a conscience.

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.

Philip ( showing some faint emotion for the first time ): There are moments when I wish I had managed it.

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

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

Lord William : She was dashing—damned expensive too. I will say that for her. Now you could ruin a young man without costing him a penny.

Lord William : I’m sorry, my dear. For a moment sordid financial considerations arose in my mind with the memory of Annette. We were all so affected by Ouida in those days. It never occurred to us to do anything simply.

Lord William : A little slipshod, a little casual, I find you. And your young men are so lacking in persistence that your young women can’t afford any subtlety. If men go about taking no for an answer they can’t expect to get “no” said to them, and there is nothing like affirmatives for taking the savour out of an affair.

Lord William : Emily, do you recollect that year when Molly was first attentive to you?

Lady Emily : Really, William, you should not betray the secrets of our youth. Ann, who is romantic, believes that Molly was the most tender of lovers.

Lord William : Well, even when you lay your amour propre aside you will admit that Molly was, if possible, far more tender than passionate.

Lady Emily : Fiddlesticks! Molly was never in the least tender, nor for that matter was he in the least passionate either. But he was not more ridiculous than any other young man who adopts an attitude unpropelled by an impulse.

Lady Emily : In the year ’80, to which William is referring, his attitude was one of affection towards myself.

Lord William : When I am flattered I always imagine that I have been told the truth.

Lady Emily : William has always been vain—whereas I have been selfish, which is a much more artistic achievement. When William was young, he succumbed to every temptation—a sad lack both of fastidiousness and of concentration. I, on the other hand, determined to miss chances and take opportunities. I succeeded.

Lord William : Are you suggesting that my delight as a parent has triumphed over my indiscretion as a chaperon? That my desire for your society has prevented me from leaving you at the right moment?

Selina : I am suggesting no such thing. I am merely mentioning the fact that you went out without me.

Lord William : To be sure, that is what comes of living in the same house. One never can remember the other person.

Ann : Mr. Molyneux, Uncle Bill and Aunt Emily have been taking your character away. If you want to find it again you need only come to me.

Lord William : Quite right, my dear. At last I have found a profession for you. A pawnbroker of reputations.

Ninian : I apologize, Mr. Molyneux. Forgive me, Uncle William. I have been kept.

Ninian : I cannot see how being rich can affect the fact that I was sitting late on a committee. And anyway, I am not rich ... you know very well, Uncle William, that it is almost impossible nowadays for a gentleman to be rich.

Lord William : It is a question of minerals, my boy. There is still coal in the earth.

Ninian : There are, I understand, a number of very rich people in this country to-day. I know very few of them.

Molyneux : Never mind—as the proverb says, if you fail the first time—and it applies, I imagine, to all of the numerous first times—try, try again.

Lady Emily : I feel that you ought to make an effort to get into touch with all these millionaires.

Ninian : I have no desire to know any of these profiteers. What could they do me? I should, I hope, feel at a disadvantage in their company.

Ninian : If you were older, Mrs. Martineau, I should say that you look younger each time I see you.

Mrs. Martineau : Please say it—I am not young enough not to have my head turned.

Lady Emily : Not easily. Believe me, not easily. Going to the bad is very difficult.

Lady Emily : Because one’s roots go deeper than one thinks. You find a lot of odd principles and inhibitions lying about at the bottom of the sea. If the psychoanalysts hadn’t made the term ridiculous I should talk of the subconscious.

Lady Emily : It has played the same part in my life that it plays in other people’s. It has been the refuge of unwelcome guests.

Lord William ( calling ): Ann. Ann! There is something the matter with Emily to-night. She has become a moralist. Everyone is very odd. Selina is silent, Tim is restless, Ninian is absent-minded, and Mrs. Martineau is sunny. Why the devil should they run away from themselves like that? By the way, Ann, what are you?

Molyneux : Tell us, Ann, is virtue really its own reward? We should so like to know. We need cheering up.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

Mrs. Martineau : Youth is an excuse for doing something foolish, not for doing something suitable.

Mrs. Martineau : And when the romance wore off there was fifty thousand a year left.

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

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

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 : 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.

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.

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.

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 .

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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 : 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?

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Lord William : I trust you did not cut her. It is better to hear what people have to say first, then you can cut them afterwards with all the more reason.

Tim : She said that of course she did not believe Ann’s story, but that it was so interesting that Ann should have cared enough for Jordan to invent it.

Tim : Afterwards, when she was really angry, she remarked that she had been sure that we would all like to feel that the world had been able to benefit by this wonderful story of Ann’s unworldliness and high sense of friendship, as these qualities are so rarely seen and still more rarely believed in.

Tim : It is having a saint like Ann discussed at all that makes one so sick. It is like seeing people without religion in a church.

Selina : I wouldn’t mind so much if they knew Ann. She is a miracle no one can deny.

Selina : At last Ninian’s qualities are coming in handy. He is incredibly grand, and, of course, it comes quite naturally to him. He is prepared to horse-whip anyone. He talks about “my wife.” He does not, of course, say she is above suspicion. That would be to cast a slur upon himself. Who was Cæsar?

Lord William : Ninian is one of those men who believe implicitly in their own all-conquering charm and, consequently, in the absence of temperament of every woman who resists them. They never consider the possibility of anyone who is not passionately in love with them being passionately in love with anyone else.

Tim : It is wonderful of her suddenly to invent a story like that, but, of course, I do see that it was rather trying for Ninian.

Selina : There are two things I can’t forgive Ann. One is her marriage with Ninian, and the other her friendship with Mr. Jordan.

[ Enter Ann , looking white and wretched, she kisses Lord William and Selina , and Tim kisses her hands.

Ann : It keeps a lot of violent-minded people busy. If “minded” be the word.

Selina : I had a letter from Mrs. Sidebotham—Si de botham ... this morning. She wants me to organize an entertainment in the village. I am afraid that Papa’s vulgar jokes wouldn’t do for that.

Lord William : No one can say that I don’t know all about village life. I’ve not forgotten my youth.

Lord William : Very formidable—arrogant, dry, autocratic, with magnificent manners.

Ann : That’s what Ninian’s generation misses. They take themselves very seriously, but somehow they are not in the least formidable. Just very long and a tiny bit ridiculous.

Thompson : Mr. Jordan has motored down from London. Could your Ladyship see him?

Philip : In the whole of my life I have never met anyone so deliberately blind as you are. You ignore all values except the ones you have created yourself. Quite suddenly, on the spur of the moment, you ruin my reputation and your own and then sit there quite calmly, talking about love.

Ann : You see, they were all attacking you, saying monstrous, wicked, lying things, I couldn’t sit there and listen. I simply told them the truth.

Ann : They said you were frightened. At least, someone suggested that, and then Mr. Molyneux said no, you were drunk, and that was why you had failed the Government. And Uncle Bill told them you had been with a woman—a woman you had picked up in the streets.

Ann : Not in the least. It was the obvious thing to do. I couldn’t sit there and listen to them telling lies about you—I’m not ashamed of having loved you.

Philip : Do you mean to sit there and tell me that all this arose simply because they said I had taken part in a drunken orgy?

Philip : Good God, do you think anyone cares a damn? That that sort of thing doesn’t happen to everyone?

Ann : I think that it matters very much for a man to fail his chief when he has trusted him, relied on him.

Philip : And if I am with you, am I not equally failing my chief who has trusted me, relied on me? Doesn’t that matter?

Ann : I think that matters too. But somehow, love is a different world—far away beyond our ordinary lives. It makes everything else seem so distant and irrelevant.

Philip : Well, I may as well explain to you that to me love is an appetite like any other appetite. It is no better and no worse than drink, and one woman is no better and no worse than another. At least I used to think that. But now I realize that a temporary adventure is nothing to being entangled in the octopus grip of a love affair with a virtuous woman.

If you want to have children, marry. If you want to love you will have to pay the bill, but see that it is a cash transaction. I meet you—a good woman, a beautiful woman, a charming woman. I am attracted to you as hundreds of men have been before me. And then, [81] suddenly you present me with your virtue. I am flattered, naturally, I take what the gods give me. Who wouldn’t? And then, what happens? The woman who used to believe in virtue, believes in love. A strange flaming thing this love, before which everything is sacrificed, pride, discretion, the conventions, reputation. You are blinded by it. What am I to do? I tell you things, I warn you, I try to escape. But everything I say is like describing objects to someone who can’t see. Gently, serenely, you laugh the foundations of your life away as if they were irrelevant absurdities.

Philip : And then, one fine day, in a moment of hysterical exaltation, you pull down the very scaffolding of the building, and, sitting among the ruins, you still smile and say: “Love is the only sense in the world.” A child of ten could have told that I had ceased to care for you. And I have been sacrificed on my own altar. Funny, isn’t it?

Philip : Well, I don’t want to waste any time psychologizing. I want to discuss the situation sensibly. Does your husband mean to divorce you?

Philip ( infinitely relieved ): Doesn’t believe that I have been your lover?

Ann : They none of them believe it except Uncle Bill. They think—it was a mad invention.

Ann : I didn’t mean that. Do you think I care what the world thinks? Do you think I mind the scandal? It’s having loved you that I mind. That is the shame that will never wear out.

Philip : At the beginning there are so many things. Surprise, discovery, exploration, enchantment. You are always going a step further—a delicious unacknowledged step—or rather you don’t go further, but you are always finding yourself further—further and deeper. And later, when you are tiring, there are still inflamed moments—moments of passion, meaningless victories of the senses over the heart, which are greedily accepted as proofs of love.

Philip : And with you there was nothing. No pride I could hurt, no vanity I could offend, no self-respect I could outrage. You gave your whole self to me, and therefore I was without weapons. There wasn’t anyone I could deal with.

Ann ( icily ): Is it usually very easy to bring a woman to breaking-point—to breaking-off point, I mean?

Ann : It has been beautifully done this time. There is nothing left, nothing at all, no mess of regrets and pangs and importunities.

Philip : I wouldn’t like to leave you unnecessarily hurt by foolish things that I said in a temper.

Ann : You have not hurt me; you have emptied me, depopulated me of everything I have ever known and believed. I shall be able to go out and look at life and try to find out what things exist and where they are.

Ann ( icily ): It is no good my discussing it with a stranger, is it? He wouldn’t understand.

Ninian : You cold women aren’t quite normal. No natural outlets, so you go and invent things.

Ninian ( putting his arm around her ): After all, you didn’t need to invent a lover.

Ninian : I see what a fool I’ve been to let my little prude be a little prude.

[ Ninian turns her face round and kisses and kisses her. When he is finished, they are both flushed; her hair is dishevelled and he is out of breath.

Ninian : My dear, seriously, you ask a little too much of life. For years you have been worshipped from afar by reverent friends as a saint and a statue. I joined [86] them in my awe of the cold, good woman, beautiful and untouched. I respected my model wife. Then, one fine day, you tell us that you have a lover—you proclaim it with flaming passion. No one believes you. Of course it isn’t true. You are the saint. What you say is only the flaring loyalty of friendship. You are such a wonderful friend, with such a beautiful, unworldly sense of the relationship.

Ninian : You all think I’m a fool, don’t you? I can’t talk. I’m not witty. I take myself seriously, and my duties seriously. Supposing some day you discover that I was not stupid as I seemed?

Ninian : Because I don’t choose to play at eighteenth-century conversations with two ridiculous old men and one intolerable young girl, because I have nothing to say to your disreputable old aunt, you think I see nothing. I let them laugh at me because it is the only thing they can do; but sometimes when I am alone, I laugh at them—I, who have no sense of humour; Ninian, your one great blunder.

Ninian : Well, you’ve often had your little laughs against me. Now, for a change, you and I are going to be fellow conspirators.

Ninian : I’m a simple man; I don’t go in for psychology. I can’t talk. I don’t want to. It is a curtain between you and life. Your uncle, your aunt, Molyneux, Selina, they make patterns over everything, but it doesn’t change the underneath.

Ninian : They think they pretend, but they get caught themselves. They thought it would be amusing to have a saint in the family. You were the only possible candidate. In fact, I agree that you fitted admirably into the rôle. You are unselfish and conscientious and charitable. Only you upset their calculations by being a real person.

Ninian : And one day, their artificial chatter became unbearable and you told them the truth.

Ninian : Precisely. But they were so well trained that they didn’t believe you.

Ninian : So they pointed out to one another that you were rather more of a saint than even they had supposed.

Ann : Ninian, why are you torturing me? Pretending to believe that ridiculous story.

Ninian : I have watched you for some time, my dear, and I have come to the conclusion that you are suffering from a very dangerous disease. Ann, you are a human being. Incidentally, you are my wife.

Ninian : You have been the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, the mistress of his household. Now, my darling, you are going to be my wife, my mistress.

[ His tone is half bullying, half insinuating. He is obviously enjoying having her on the rack.

Ann : Ninian, you are so different. I—you—I mean I don’t know what you’re talking about.

[ Ninian gets up and drags Ann to the sofa, pushing her on to her knees and imprisoning her between his two legs. With one hand he is holding her two wrists behind her back, with the other he is stroking her hair.

Ninian : They didn’t know how to treat you, did they? Tim and the others? Only Jordan knew. Women always capitulate to the men who think lightly of love.

Ninian : I’m asserting myself, my dear. Master and Mistress—that’s what a household needs.

Ninian : Where are those beautiful manners? Say “Please let me go, dear Ninian.”

Ninian : I didn’t say you might walk away. Sit there. It is delightful to feel that we are sharing a secret—fellow conspirators.

Ninian : Where is the charming family chatter? And surely even your usual courtesy would compel you to answer when you are spoken to.

Ninian : It is a sad thing that a man with your father’s attainments should not have devoted his gifts to the service of his country.

Lord William : That night when he didn’t turn up to make his speech. You remember? The occasion Ann made that tirade about.

Lord William : Tommy Dunn saw him getting out of a taxi with a woman at one a.m. at the door of a block of flats—flats that I am afraid Tommy knows only too well. He’s quite certain it was Jordan because Jordan’s hat fell off and he picked it up.

Ann : I know. I was a fool. It was a silly thing to do. It was the first thing that came into my head.

Ninian : Uncle William, I have insulted my wife this morning in a way that no woman has ever been insulted before. Ann, do you think that you can ever forgive me?

[ Enter Molyneux and Lady Emily . They are all talking. Lord William and Ann are D. S. L. corner.

Molyneux : Home, sweet home. When I am asked if I have any relations I always say, I have some Cathcart connections.

Ann ( in a tone of desperate weariness ): Everything is going round and round just the same, though the bottom has fallen out of life.

Lord William : My dear, life is a merry-go-round. It never stops for you however many things you drop. The onlooker sees you sitting on the same painted swan, but he can’t see your broken heart unless you show it to him. There is only one rule—not to fall off.

Lady Emily : As we were crossing the park we met the vicar, who said, “Quite a stranger, Lady Emily.” It is delightful to be able to count on something in this world.

Molyneux : Candover means a great deal to me. In the whole shifting scene of life, here alone I find my certainties.

Lady Emily : Selina, do you remember that little thing like barley sugar who married a big-game shooter?

Ann ( desperately, to Lord William ): Listen to them. I can’t bear it. They are going on as if nothing had happened.

Ann : They are just the same—just the same as they were the day before yesterday.

Lord William : Just the same as they were fifty years ago. Why should they change now?

Ann : And Ninian thinks that he has wronged me, and Tim believes that I am a saint.

Ann : What was it you said? In life we don’t go from one thing to another, but from one thing to the same thing.

Lord William : You see, one is after all the same person. Whatever we do, our actions are defeated by our characters.

Lady Emily :—she really was a very silly woman. Looking up with her huge blue eyes, she said, “My husband married me for love.”

Molyneux :—And I commented acidly, “So many marriages can only be explained by love.”

Lady Emily :—And the fool answered, “Dear Mr. Molyneux, it does me good to hear you say that. I knew you were an idealist.”

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ACT I.	Candover Hall.
ACT II.	The Candovers’ house in London. A month later.
(The curtain will be lowered during this act to indicate the passing of an hour).
ACT III.	Candover Hall. Two days later.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The painted swan

THE PAINTED SWAN

ACT I

ACT I

ACT II

ACT II

Scene I

Scene II

ACT III

ACT III

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