W. Somerset Maugham

“ Teddie. You’re not in love with Arnold; you’re in love with me. It’s idiotic to sacrifice your life for a slushy sentiment.
Elizabeth. After all, I did marry him.
Teddie. Well, you made a mistake. A marriage without love is no marriage at all.
Elizabeth. I made the mistake. Why should he suffer for it? If anyone has to suffer it’s only right that I should.
Teddie. What sort of a life do you think it would be with him? When two people are married it’s very difficult for one of them to be unhappy without making the other unhappy too. ”

“ Arnold. For goodness’ sake don’t be funny, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth. I’ve quite made up my mind to leave you, Arnold.
Arnold. Come, come, Elizabeth, you must be sensible. You haven’t any reason to leave me.
Elizabeth. Why should you wish to keep a woman tied to you who wants to be free?
Arnold. I happen to be in love with you.
Elizabeth. You might have said that before.
Arnold. I thought you’d take it for granted. You can’t expect a man to go on making love to his wife after three years. I’m very busy. I’m awfully keen on politics and I’ve worked like a dog to make this house a thing of beauty. ”

“ Tell me frankly, Kitty, don’t you think people make a lot of unnecessary fuss about love?
[Pg 56]
Lady Kitty. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world.
C.-C. You’re incorrigible. Do you really think it was worth sacrificing so much for?
Lady Kitty. My dear Clive, I don’t mind telling you that if I had my time over again I should be unfaithful to you, but I should not leave you. ”

“ Teddie. Don’t you think we’d get on rather well together?
Porteous. Elizabeth’s a fool if she don’t stick to her husband. It’s bad enough for the man, but for the woman—it’s damnable. I hold no brief for Arnold. He plays bridge like a foot. Saving your presence, Kitty, I think he’s a prig.
Lady Kitty. Poor dear, his father was at his age. I daresay he’ll grow out of it.
Porteous. But you stick to him, Elizabeth, stick to him. Man is a gregarious animal. We’re members of a herd. If we break the herd’s laws we suffer for it. And we suffer damnably. ”

“ What’s wrong with England?
Teddie. I don’t think anything’s wrong with England. I expect something’s wrong with me. I’ve been away too long. England seems to me full of people doing things they don’t want to because other people expect it of them.
Elizabeth. Isn’t that what you call a high degree of civilisation?
Teddie. People seem to me so insincere. When you go to parties in London they’re all babbling about art, and you feel that in their hearts they don’t care twopence [Pg 24] about it. They read the books that everybody is talking about because they don’t want to be out of it. ”

“ I’d have been quite content with Western Australia.
Porteous. My dear, you don’t think I’d have let you bury yourself in Western Australia?
Lady Kitty. Or Barbadoes.
Porteous. Never. It sounds like a cure for flat feet. I’d have kept you in London.
[He picks up the album and is about to look at the photograph of Lady Kitty. She puts her hand over it.
Lady Kitty. No, don’t look.
[He takes her hand away.
Porteous. Don’t be so silly.
Lady Kitty. Isn’t it hateful to grow old?
Porteous. You know, you haven’t changed much.
Lady Kitty. [Enchanted.] Oh, Hughie, how can you talk such nonsense? ”

“ Elizabeth. None.
Lady Kitty. Then how can you stand on your own feet? You think I’m a silly, frivolous woman, but I’ve learned something in a bitter school. They can make what laws they like, they can give us the suffrage, but when you come down to bedrock it’s the man who pays the piper who calls the tune. Woman will only be the equal of man when she earns her living in the same way that he does.
Elizabeth. [Smiling.] It sounds rather funny to hear you talk like that.
Lady Kitty. A cook who marries a butler can snap her fingers in his face because she can earn just as much as he can. ”

“ Lady Kitty. Besides, in politics it’s not the men that matter. It’s the women at the back of them. I could have made Clive a Cabinet Minister if I’d wanted to.
Porteous. Clive?
Lady Kitty. With my beauty, my charm, my force of character, my wit, I could have done anything.
Porteous. Clive was nothing but my political secretary. When I was Prime Minister I might have made him Governor of some Colony or other. Western Australia, say. Out of pure kindliness.
Lady Kitty. [With flashing eyes.] D’you think I would have buried myself in Western Australia? With my beauty? My charm? ”

“ The Footman brings in a tray on which are tea-things.
Lady Kitty. Shall I pour it out for you?
Arnold. Thank you very much.
Lady Kitty. Do you take sugar?
Arnold. No. I gave it up during the war.
Lady Kitty. So wise of you. It’s so bad for the figure. Besides being patriotic, of course. Isn’t it absurd that I should ask my son if he takes sugar or not? Life is really very quaint. Sad, of course, but oh, so quaint! Often I lie in bed at night and have a good laugh to myself as I think how quaint life is.
Arnold. I’m afraid I’m a very serious person.
Lady Kitty. How old are you now, Arnold? ”

“ Lady Kitty. When I saw that you didn’t marry again I couldn’t help thinking that you still loved me.
C.-C. I am one of the few men I know who is able to profit by experience.
Lady Kitty. In the eyes of the Church I am still your wife. The Church is so wise. It knows that in the end a woman always comes back to her first love. Clive, I am willing to return to you.
C.-C. My dear Kitty, I couldn’t take advantage of your momentary vexation with Hughie to let you take a step which I know you would bitterly regret.
Lady Kitty. You’ve waited for me a long time. For Arnold’s sake. ”

“ You see, I never knew my mother; she died when I was a baby. You can’t confide in aunts with huge families of their own. I want Arnold’s mother to be a mother to me. I’ve got so much to say to her.
C.-C. Are you happy with Arnold?
Elizabeth. Why shouldn’t I be?
C.-C. Why haven’t you got any babies?
Elizabeth. Give us a little time. We’ve only been married three years.
C.-C. I wonder what Hughie is like now!
Elizabeth. Lord Porteous?
C.-C. He wore his clothes better than any man in London. You know he’d have been Prime Minister if he’d remained in politics. ”

“ Elizabeth. I imagine that frills are not much worn in the F.M.S. It must be a comfort.
Teddie. It’s not much good being pretentious where everyone knows exactly who you are and what your income is.
Elizabeth. I don’t think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.
Teddie. And then, you know, the place is ripping. You get used to a blue sky and you miss it in England.
Elizabeth. What do you do with yourself all the time?
Teddie. Oh, one works like blazes. You have to be a pretty hefty fellow to be a planter. ”

“ Elizabeth. If Teddie stopped caring for me I shouldn’t want him to stay with me for five minutes.
Lady Kitty. One says that when one’s sure of a man’s love, but when one isn’t any more—oh, it’s so different. In those circumstances one’s got to keep a man’s love. It’s the only thing one has.
Elizabeth. I’m a human being. I can stand on my own feet. ”

“ Arnold. After all one can’t have it both ways. You can’t serve God and Mammon. If you want to do the decent thing you have to be prepared to suffer for it.
Elizabeth. But I don’t want you to suffer for it.
Arnold. At first I rather hesitated at the scandal. But I daresay that was only weakness on my part. Under the circumstances I should have liked to keep out of the Divorce Court if I could.
Elizabeth. Arnold, you’re making me absolutely miserable.
Arnold. What you said before dinner was quite right. It’s nothing for a man, but it makes so much difference to a woman. ”

“ Lady Kitty. My dear Hughie, he never had your style. Why, the moment you come into a room everyone looks and says: “Who the devil is that?”
Porteous. What? You think that, do you? Well, I daresay there’s something in what you say. These damned Radicals can say what they like, but, by God, Kitty! when a man’s a gentleman—well, damn it all, you know what I mean.
[Pg 73]
Lady Kitty. I think Clive has degenerated dreadfully since we left him. ”

“ Lady Kitty. Of course he did eventually.
Elizabeth. [Hardly knowing what to say.] You must have been very unhappy.
Lady Kitty. Oh, I was, dreadfully. Night after night I sobbed my heart out when Hughie told me he was going to play cards at the club and I knew he was with that odious woman. Of course, it wasn’t as if there weren’t plenty of men who were only too anxious to console me. Men have always been attracted by me, you know. ”

“ Elizabeth. I don’t want you to.
[They look at one another steadily. They are both grave. Arnold comes in hurriedly.
Arnold. They’re coming, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth. [As though returning from a distant world.] Who?
Arnold. [Impatiently.] My dear! My mother, of course. The car is just coming up the drive.
Teddie. Would you like me to clear out?
Arnold. No, no! For goodness’ sake stay.
Elizabeth. We’d better go and meet them, Arnold.
Arnold. No, no; I think they’d much better be shown in. I feel simply sick with nervousness. ”

“ Teddie. But I wasn’t offering you happiness. I don’t think my sort of love tends to happiness. I’m jealous. I’m not a very easy man to get on with. I’m often out of temper and irritable. I should be fed to the teeth with you sometimes, and so would you be with me. I daresay we’d fight like cat and dog, and sometimes we’d hate each other. Often you’d be wretched and bored stiff and lonely, and often you’d be frightfully homesick, and then you’d regret all you’d lost. ”

“ They hadn’t had such a treat for a generation. The most popular song of the day was about my mother. Did you ever hear it? “Naughty Lady Kitty. Thought it such a pity . . .”
Elizabeth. [Interrupting.] Oh, Arnold, don’t!
Arnold. And then they never let people forget them. If they’d lived quietly in Florence and not made a fuss the scandal would have died down. But those constant actions between Lord and Lady Porteous kept on reminding everyone.
Teddie. What were they having actions about?
Arnold. Of course my father divorced his wife, but Lady Porteous refused to divorce Porteous. ”

“ Teddie. In England if people don’t get on they go their own ways and jog along after a fashion. In a place like that you’re thrown a great deal on your own resources.
Elizabeth. Of course.
Teddie. Lots of girls come out because they think they’re going to have a good time. But if they’re empty-headed, then they’re just faced with their own emptiness and they’re done. If their husbands can afford it they go home and settle down as grass-widows.
Elizabeth. I’ve met them. They seem to find it a very pleasant occupation.
Teddie. It’s rotten for their husbands, though. ”

“ Champion-Cheney is a tall man in the early sixties, spare, with a fine head of gray hair and an intelligent, somewhat ascetic face. He is very carefully dressed. He is a man who makes the most of himself. He bears his years jauntily. He kisses Elizabeth and then holds out his hand to Arnold.
Elizabeth. We thought you’d be in Paris for another month.
C.-C. How are you, Arnold? I always reserve to myself the privilege of changing my mind. It’s the only one elderly gentlemen share with pretty women.
Elizabeth. You know Anna. ”

“ Whose hash are you talking about?
C.-C. Mr. Edward Luton’s, my dear Hughie. I told Arnold exactly what to do and he’s done it. What makes a prison? Why, bars and bolts. Remove them and a prisoner won’t want to escape. Clever, I flatter myself.
Porteous. You were always that, Clive, but at the moment you’re obscure.
C.-C. I told Arnold to go to Elizabeth and tell her she could have her freedom. I told him to sacrifice himself all along the line. I know what women are. The moment every obstacle was removed to her marriage with Teddie Luton, half the allurement was gone.
Lady Kitty. ”

“ She is somewhat outrageously dressed. She never forgets that she has been a pretty woman and she still behaves as if she were twenty-five. Lord Porteous is a very bald, elderly gentleman in loose, rather eccentric clothes. He is snappy and gruff. This is not at all the couple that Elizabeth expected, and for a moment she stares at them with round, startled eyes. Lady Kitty goes up to her with outstretched hands.
Lady Kitty. Elizabeth! Elizabeth! [She kisses her [Pg 27] effusively.] What an adorable creature! [Turning to Porteous.] Hughie, isn’t she adorable? ”

“ I think your manners are perfectly deplorable, Hughie.
Porteous. It’s simply maddening when you’re playing patience and people won’t leave you alone.
C.-C. We won’t say another word.
Porteous. That three goes. I believe it’s coming out. If I’d been such a fool as to put that seven up I shouldn’t have been able to bring these down.
[He puts down several cards while they watch him silently.
Lady Kitty and C.-C. [Together.] The four goes on the five.
Porteous. [Throwing down the cards violently.] Damn you! why don’t you leave me alone? It’s intolerable.
C.-C. It was coming out, my dear fellow. ”

“ C.-C. Nonsense! Men are romantic. A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self-indulgence.
Arnold. I never know whether you’re a humorist or a cynic, father.
C.-C. I’m neither, my dear boy; I’m merely a very truthful man. But people are so unused to the truth that they’re apt to mistake it for a joke or a sneer.
Arnold. [Irritably.] It seems so unfair that this should happen to me.
C.-C. Keep your head, my boy, and do what I tell you.
[Lady Kitty and Elizabeth come in. Lady Kitty is in a gorgeous evening gown.
[Pg 68]
Elizabeth. ”