THE CIRCLE

THE FIRST ACT

The Scene is a stately drawing-room at Aston-Adey, with fine pictures on the walls and Georgian furniture. Aston-Adey has been described, with many illustrations, in Country Life. It is not a house, but a place. Its owner takes a great pride in it, and there is nothing in the room which is not of the period. Through the French windows at the back can be seen the beautiful gardens which are one of the features.

It is a fine summer morning.

Arnold comes in. He is a man of about thirty-five, tall and good-looking, fair, with a clean-cut, sensitive face. He has a look that is intellectual, but somewhat bloodless. He is very well dressed.

Arnold. [Calling.] Elizabeth! [He goes to the window and calls again.] Elizabeth! [He rings the bell. While he is waiting he gives a look round the room. He slightly alters the position of one of the chairs. He takes an ornament from the chimney-piece and blows the dust from it.]

[A Footman comes in.

Oh, George! see if you can find Mrs. Cheney, and ask her if she’d be good enough to come here.

Footman. Very good, sir.

[The Footman turns to go.

Arnold. Who is supposed to look after this room?

Footman. I don’t know, sir.

Arnold. I wish when they dust they’d take care to replace the things exactly as they were before.

Footman. Yes, sir.

Arnold. [Dismissing him.] All right.

[The Footman goes out. He goes again to the window and calls.

Arnold. Elizabeth! [He sees Mrs. Shenstone.] Oh, Anna, do you know where Elizabeth is?

[Mrs. Shenstone comes in from the garden. She is a woman of forty, pleasant and of elegant appearance.

Anna. Isn’t she playing tennis?

Arnold. No, I’ve been down to the tennis court. Something very tiresome has happened.

Anna. Oh?

Arnold. I wonder where the deuce she is.

Anna. When do you expect Lord Porteous and Lady Kitty?

Arnold. They’re motoring down in time for luncheon.

Anna. Are you sure you want me to be here? It’s not too late yet, you know. I can have my things packed and catch a train for somewhere or other.

Arnold. No, of course we want you. It’ll make it so much easier if there are people here. It was exceedingly kind of you to come.

Anna. Oh, nonsense!

Arnold. And I think it was a good thing to have Teddie Luton down.

Anna. He is so breezy, isn’t he?

Arnold. Yes, that’s his great asset. I don’t know that he’s very intelligent, but, you know, there are occasions when you want a bull in a china shop. I sent one of the servants to find Elizabeth.

Anna. I daresay she’s putting on her shoes. She and Teddie were going to have a single.

Arnold. It can’t take all this time to change one’s shoes.

Anna. [With a smile.] One can’t change one’s shoes without powdering one’s nose, you know.

[Elizabeth comes in. She is a very pretty creature in the early twenties. She wears a light summer frock.

Arnold. My dear, I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. What have you been doing?

Elizabeth. Nothing! I’ve been standing on my head.

Arnold. My father’s here.

Elizabeth. [Startled.] Where?

Arnold. At the cottage. He arrived last night.

Elizabeth. Damn!

Arnold. [Good-humouredly.] I wish you wouldn’t say that, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth. If you’re not going to say “Damn” when a thing’s damnable, when are you going to say “Damn”?

Arnold. I should have thought you could say, “Oh, bother!” or something like that.

Elizabeth. But that wouldn’t express my sentiments. Besides, at that speech day when you were giving away the prizes you said there were no synonyms in the English language.

Anna. [Smiling.] Oh, Elizabeth! it’s very unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Arnold. I’m always willing to stand by anything I’ve said. There are no synonyms in the English language.

Elizabeth. In that case I shall be regretfully forced to continue to say “Damn” whenever I feel like it.

[Edward Luton shows himself at the window. He is an attractive youth in flannels.

Teddie. I say, what about this tennis?

Elizabeth. Come in. We’re having a scene.

Teddie. [Entering.] How splendid! What about?

Elizabeth. The English language.

Teddie. Don’t tell me you’ve been splitting your infinitives.

Arnold. [With the shadow of a frown.] I wish you’d be serious, Elizabeth. The situation is none too pleasant.

Anna. I think Teddie and I had better make ourselves scarce.

Elizabeth. Nonsense! You’re both in it. If there’s going to be any unpleasantness we want your moral support. That’s why we asked you to come.

Teddie. And I thought I’d been asked for my blue eyes.

Elizabeth. Vain beast! And they happen to be brown.

Teddie. Is anything up?

Elizabeth. Arnold’s father arrived last night.

Teddie. Did he, by Jove! I thought he was in Paris.

Arnold. So did we all. He told me he’d be there for the next month.

Anna. Have you seen him?

Arnold. No! he rang me up. It’s a mercy he had a telephone put in the cottage. It would have been a pretty kettle of fish if he’d just walked in.

Elizabeth. Did you tell him Lady Catherine was coming?

Arnold. Of course not. I was flabbergasted to know he was here. And then I thought we’d better talk it over first.

Elizabeth. Is he coming along here?

Arnold. Yes. He suggested it, and I couldn’t think of any excuse to prevent him.

Teddie. Couldn’t you put the other people off?

Arnold. They’re coming by car. They may be here any minute. It’s too late to do that.

Elizabeth. Besides, it would be beastly.

Arnold. I knew it was silly to have them here. Elizabeth insisted.

Elizabeth. After all, she is your mother, Arnold.

Arnold. That meant precious little to her when she—went away. You can’t imagine it means very much to me now.

Elizabeth. It’s thirty years ago. It seems so absurd to bear malice after all that time.

Arnold. I don’t bear malice, but the fact remains that she did me the most irreparable harm. I can find no excuse for her.

Elizabeth. Have you ever tried to?

Arnold. My dear Elizabeth, it’s no good going over all that again. The facts are lamentably simple. She had a husband who adored her, a wonderful position, all the money she could want, and a child of five. And she ran away with a married man.

Elizabeth. Lady Porteous is not a very attractive woman, Arnold. [To Anna.] Do you know her?

Anna. [Smiling.] “Forbidding” is the word, I think.

Arnold. If you’re going to make little jokes about it, I have nothing more to say.

Anna. I’m sorry, Arnold.

Elizabeth. Perhaps your mother couldn’t help herself—if she was in love?

Arnold. And had no sense of honour, duty, or decency? Oh, yes, under those circumstances you can explain a great deal.

Elizabeth. That’s not a very pretty way to speak of your mother.

Arnold. I can’t look on her as my mother.

Elizabeth. What you can’t get over is that she didn’t think of you. Some of us are more mother and some of us more woman. It gives me a little thrill when I think that she loved that man so much. She sacrificed her name, her position, and her child to him.

Arnold. You really can’t expect the said child to have any great affection for the mother who treated him like that.

Elizabeth. No, I don’t think I do. But I think it’s a pity after all these years that you shouldn’t be friends.

Arnold. I wonder if you realise what it was to grow up under the shadow of that horrible scandal. Everywhere, at school, and at Oxford, and afterwards in London, I was always the son of Lady Kitty Cheney. Oh, it was cruel, cruel!

Elizabeth. Yes, I know, Arnold. It was beastly for you.

Arnold. It would have been bad enough if it had been an ordinary case, but the position of the people made it ten times worse. My father was in the House then, and Porteous—he hadn’t succeeded to the title—was in the House too; he was Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and he was very much in the public eye.

Anna. My father always used to say he was the ablest man in the party. Every one was expecting him to be Prime Minister.

Arnold. You can imagine what a boon it was to the British public. 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. He tried to force her by refusing to support her and turning her out of her house, and heaven knows what. They were constantly wrangling in the law courts.

Anna. I think it was monstrous of Lady Porteous.

Arnold. She knew he wanted to marry my mother, and she hated my mother. You can’t blame her.

Anna. It must have been very difficult for them.

Arnold. That’s why they’ve lived in Florence. Porteous has money. They found people there who were willing to accept the situation.

Elizabeth. This is the first time they’ve ever come to England.

Arnold. My father will have to be told, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth. Yes.

Anna. [To Elizabeth.] Has he ever spoken to you about Lady Kitty?

Elizabeth. Never.

Arnold. I don’t think her name has passed his lips since she ran away from this house thirty years ago.

Teddie. Oh, they lived here?

Arnold. Naturally. There was a house-party, and one evening neither Porteous nor my mother came down to dinner. The rest of them waited. They couldn’t make it out. My father sent up to my mother’s room, and a note was found on the pincushion.

Elizabeth. [With a faint smile.] That’s what they did in the Dark Ages.

Arnold. I think he took a dislike to this house from that horrible night. He never lived here again, and when I married he handed the place over to me. He just has a cottage now on the estate that he comes to when he feels inclined.

Elizabeth. It’s been very nice for us.

Arnold. I owe everything to my father. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me for asking these people to come here.

Elizabeth. I’m going to take all the blame on myself, Arnold.

Arnold. [Irritably.] The situation was embarrassing enough anyhow. I don’t know how I ought to treat them.

Elizabeth. Don’t you think that’ll settle itself when you see them?

Arnold. After all, they’re my guests. I shall try and behave like a gentleman.

Elizabeth. I wouldn’t. We haven’t got central heating.

Arnold. [Taking no notice.] Will she expect me to kiss her?

Elizabeth. [With a smile.] Surely.

Arnold. It always makes me uncomfortable when people are effusive.

Anna. But I can’t understand why you never saw her before.

Arnold. I believe she tried to see me when I was little, but my father thought it better she shouldn’t.

Anna. Yes, but when you were grown up?

Arnold. She was always in Italy. I never went to Italy.

Elizabeth. It seems to me so pathetic that if you saw one another in the street you wouldn’t recognise each other.

Arnold. Is it my fault?

Elizabeth. You’ve promised to be very gentle with her and very kind.

Arnold. The mistake was asking Porteous to come too. It looks as though we condoned the whole thing. And how am I to treat him? Am I to shake him by the hand and slap him on the back? He absolutely ruined my father’s life.

Elizabeth. [Smiling.] How much would you give for a nice motor accident that prevented them from coming?

Arnold.