MRS HUSHABYE Quite a romance. And when did the Boss develop the tender passion?

ELLIE Oh, that was years after, quite lately. He took the chair one night at a sort of people’s concert. I was singing there. As an amateur, you know: half a guinea for expenses and three songs with three encores. He was so pleased with my singing that he asked might he walk home with me. I never saw anyone so taken aback as he was when I took him home and introduced him to my father, his own manager. It was then that my father told me how nobly he had behaved. Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And — and — we drifted into a sort of understanding — I suppose I should call it an engagement — [she is distressed and cannot go on].

MRS HUSHABYE [rising and marching about] You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it.

ELLIE [hopelessly] No: it’s no use. I am bound in honor and gratitude. I will go through with it.

MRS HUSHABYE [behind the sofa, scolding down at her] You know, of course, that it’s not honorable or grateful to marry a man you don’t love. Do you love this Mangan man?

ELLIE Yes. At least —

MRS HUSHABYE I don’t want to know about “at least”: I want to know the worst. Girls of your age fall in love with all sorts of impossible people, especially old people.

ELLIE I like Mr Mangan very much; and I shall always be —

MRS HUSHABYE [impatiently completing the sentence and prancing away intolerantly to starboard] — grateful to him for his kindness to dear father. I know. Anybody else?

ELLIE What do you mean?

MRS HUSHABYE Anybody else? Are you in love with anybody else?

ELLIE Of course not.

MRS HUSHABYE Humph! [The book on the drawing-table catches her eye. She picks it up, and evidently finds the title very unexpected. She looks at ELLIE, and asks, quaintly] Quite sure you’re not in love with an actor?

ELLIE No, no. Why? What put such a thing into your head?

MRS HUSHABYE This is yours, isn’t it? Why else should you be reading Othello?

ELLIE My father taught me to love Shakespeare.

MRS HUSHABYE [flinging the book down on the table] Really! your father does seem to be about the limit.

ELLIE [naively] Do you never read Shakespeare, Hesione? That seems to me so extraordinary. I like Othello.

MRS HUSHABYE Do you, indeed? He was jealous, wasn’t he?

ELLIE Oh, not that. I think all the part about jealousy is horrible. But don’t you think it must have been a wonderful experience for Desdemona, brought up so quietly at home, to meet a man who had been out in the world doing all sorts of brave things and having terrible adventures, and yet finding something in her that made him love to sit and talk with her and tell her about them?

MRS HUSHABYE That’s your idea of romance, is it?

ELLIE Not romance, exactly. It might really happen.

ELLIE’s eyes show that she is not arguing, but in a daydream. MRS HUSHABYE, watching her inquisitively, goes deliberately back to the sofa and resumes her seat beside her.

MRS HUSHABYE Ellie darling, have you noticed that some of those stories that Othello told Desdemona couldn’t have happened?

ELLIE Oh, no. Shakespeare thought they could have happened.

MRS HUSHABYE Um! Desdemona thought they could have happened. But they didn’t.

ELLIE Why do you look so enigmatic about it?You are such a sphinx: I never know what you mean.

MRS HUSHABYE Desdemona would have found him out if she had lived, you know. I wonder was that why he strangled her!

ELLIE Othello was not telling lies.

MRS HUSHABYE How do you know?

ELLIE Shakespeare would have said if he was. Hesione, there are men who have done wonderful things: men like Othello, only, of course, white, and very handsome, and —

MRS HUSHABYE Ah! Now we’re coming to it. Tell me all about him. I knew there must be somebody, or you’d never have been so miserable about Mangan: you’d have thought it quite a lark to marry him.

ELLIE [blushing vividly] Hesione, you are dreadful. But I don’t want to make a secret of it, though of course I don’t tell everybody. Besides, I don’t know him.

MRS HUSHABYE Don’t know him! What does that mean?

ELLIE Well, of course I know him to speak to.

MRS HUSHABYE But you want to know him ever so much more intimately, eh?

ELLIE No, no: I know him quite — almost intimately.

MRS HUSHABYE You don’t know him; and you know him almost intimately. How lucid!

ELLIE I mean that he does not call on us. I — I got into conversation with him by chance at a concert.

MRS HUSHABYE You seem to have rather a gay time at your concerts, Ellie.

ELLIE Not at all: we talk to everyone in the green-room waiting for our turns. I thought he was one of the artists: he looked so splendid. But he was only one of the committee. I happened to tell him that I was copying a picture at the National Gallery. I make a little money that way. I can’t paint much; but as it’s always the same picture I can do it pretty quickly and get two or three pounds for it. It happened that he came to the National Gallery one day.

MRS HUSHABYE On students’ day. Paid sixpence to stumble about through a crowd of easels, when he might have come in next day for nothing and found the floor clear! Quite by accident?

ELLIE [triumphantly] No. On purpose. He liked talking to me. He knows lots of the most splendid people. Fashionable women who are all in love with him. But he ran away from them to see me at the National Gallery and persuade me to come with him for a drive round Richmond Park in a taxi.

MRS HUSHABYE My pettikins, you have been going it. It’s wonderful what you good girls can do without anyone saying a word.

ELLIE I am not in society, Hesione. If I didn’t make acquaintances in that way I shouldn’t have any at all.

MRS HUSHABYE Well, no harm if you know how to take care of yourself. May I ask his name?

ELLIE [slowly and musically] Marcus Darnley.

MRS HUSHABYE [echoing the music] Marcus Darnley! What a splendid name!

ELLIE Oh, I’m so glad you think so. I think so too; but I was afraid it was only a silly fancy of my own.

MRS HUSHABYE Hm! Is he one of the Aberdeen Darnleys?

ELLIE Nobody knows. Just fancy! He was found in an antique chest —

MRS HUSHABYE A what?

ELLIE An antique chest, one summer morning in a rose garden, after a night of the most terrible thunderstorm.

MRS HUSHABYE What on earth was he doing in the chest? Did he get into it because he was afraid of the lightning?

ELLIE Oh, no, no: he was a baby. The name Marcus Darnley was embroidered on his baby clothes. And five hundred pounds in gold.

MRS HUSHABYE [looking hard at her] Ellie!

ELLIE The garden of the Viscount —

MRS HUSHABYE — de Rougemont?[303]

ELLIE [innocently] No: de Larochejaquelin. A French family. A vicomte. His life has been one long romance. A tiger —

MRS HUSHABYE Slain by his own hand?

ELLIE Oh, no: nothing vulgar like that. He saved the life of the tiger from a hunting party: one of King Edward’s hunting parties in India. The King was furious: that was why he never had his military services properly recognized. But he doesn’t care. He is a Socialist and despises rank, and has been in three revolutions fighting on the barricades.

MRS HUSHABYE How can you sit there telling me such lies? You, Ellie, of all people! And I thought you were a perfectly simple, straightforward, good girl.

ELLIE [rising, dignified but very angry] Do you mean to say you don’t believe me?

MRS HUSHABYE Of course I don’t believe you. You’re inventing every word of it. Do you take me for a fool?