Start: Miss L: Well, have they primed yo...

Start: Miss L: Well, have they primed you? Have you got your lesson (with a little broken laugh) by heart at last?

Stonor (looking at her from immeasurable distance). I am not sure I understand you. (Pause.) However unpropitious your mood may be—I shall discharge my errand. (Pause. Her silence irritates him.) I have promised to offer you what I believe is called "amends."

Miss L. (quickly). You've come to realise, then—after all these years—that you owed me something?

Stonor (on the brink of protest, checks himself). I am not here to deny it.

Miss L. (fiercely). Pay, then—pay.

Stonor (a moment's dread as he looks at her, his lips set. Then stonily). I have promised that, if you exact it, I will.

Miss L. Ah! If I insist you'll "make it all good"! (Quite low.) Then don't you know you must pay me in kind?

Stonor. What do you mean?

Miss L. Give me back what you took from me: my old faith. Give me that.

Stonor. Oh, if you mean to make phrases—— (A gesture of scant patience.)

Miss L. (going closer). Or give me back mere kindness—or even tolerance. Oh, I don't mean your tolerance! Give me back the power to think fairly of my brothers—not as mockers—thieves.

Stonor. I have not mocked you. And I have asked you—— Miss L. Something you knew I should refuse! Or (her eyes blaze) did you dare to be afraid I wouldn't?

Stonor. I suppose, if we set our teeth, we could—— Miss L. I couldn't—not even if I set my teeth. And you wouldn't dream of asking me, if you thought there was the smallest chance.

Stonor. I can do no more than make you an offer of such reparation as is in my power. If you don't accept it—— (He turns with an air of "That's done.")

Miss L. Accept it? No!... Go away and live in debt! Pay and pay and pay—and find yourself still in debt!—for a thing you'll never be able to give me back. (Lower.) And when you come to die, say to yourself, "I paid all creditors but one."

Stonor. I'm rather tired, you know, of this talk of debt. If I hear that you persist in it I shall have to——

Miss L. What? (She faces him.)

Stonor. No. I'll keep to my resolution. (Turning to the door.)

Miss L. (intercepting him). What resolution?

Stonor. I came here, under considerable pressure, to speak of the future—not to re-open the past. Miss L. The Future and the Past are one.

Stonor. You talk as if that old madness was mine alone. It is the woman's way.

Miss L. I know. And it's not fair. Men suffer as well as we by the woman's starting wrong. We are taught to think the man a sort of demigod. If he tells her: "go down into Hell"—down into Hell she goes.

Stonor. Make no mistake. Not the woman alone. They go down together.

Miss L. Yes, they go down together, but the man comes up alone. As a rule. It is more convenient so—for him. And for the Other Woman.

(The eyes of both go to Jean's door.)

Stonor (angrily). My conscience is clear. I know—and so do you—that most men in my position wouldn't have troubled themselves. I gave myself endless trouble.

Miss L. (with wondering eyes). So you've gone about all these years feeling that you'd discharged every obligation.

Stonor. Not only that. I stood by you with a fidelity that was nothing short of Quixotic. If, woman like, you must recall the Past—I insist on your recalling it correctly.

Miss L. (very low). You think I don't recall it correctly?

Stonor. Not when you make—other people believe that I deserted you. (With gathering wrath.) It's a curious enough charge when you stop to consider—— (Checks himself, and with a gesture of impatience sweeps the whole thing out of his way.)

Miss L. Well, when we do—just for five minutes out of ten years—when we do stop to consider——

Stonor. We remember it was you who did the deserting! Since you had to rake the story up, you might have had the fairness to tell the facts.

Miss L. You think "the facts" would have excused you! (She sits.)

Stonor. No doubt you've forgotten them, since Lady John tells me you wouldn't remember my existence once a year if the newspapers didn't——

Miss L. Ah, you minded that!

Stonor (with manly spirit). I minded your giving false impressions. (She is about to speak, he advances on her.) Do you deny that you returned my letters unopened?

Miss L. (quietly). No.

Stonor. Do you deny that you refused to see me—and that, when I persisted, you vanished?

Miss L. I don't deny any of those things.

Stonor. Why, I had no trace of you for years!

Miss L. I suppose not.

Stonor. Very well, then. What could I do?

Miss L. Nothing. It was too late to do anything.

Stonor. It wasn't too late! You knew—since you "read the papers"—that my father died that same year. There was no longer any barrier between us.

Miss L. Oh yes, there was a barrier.

Stonor. Of your own making, then.

Miss L. I had my guilty share in it—but the barrier (her voice trembles)—the barrier was your invention. Stonor. It was no "invention." If you had ever known my father——

Miss L. Oh, the echoes! The echoes! How often you used to say, if I "knew your father!" But you said, too (lower)—you called the greatest barrier by another name.

Stonor. What name?

Miss L. (very low). The child that was to come.

Stonor (hastily). That was before my father died. While I still hoped to get his consent.

Miss L. (nods). How the thought of that all-powerful personage used to terrorise me! What chance had a little unborn child against "the last of the great feudal lords," as you called him.

Stonor. You know the child would have stood between you and me!

Miss L. I know the child did stand between you and me!

Stonor (with vague uneasiness). It did stand——

Miss L. Happy mothers teach their children. Mine had to teach me.

Stonor. You talk as if——

Miss L.—teach me that a woman may do a thing for love's sake that shall kill love.

(A silence.)

Stonor (fearing and putting from him fuller comprehension, rises with an air of finality). You certainly made it plain you had no love left for me.

Miss L. I had need of it all for the child.

Stonor (stares—comes closer, speaks hurriedly and very low). Do you mean then that, after all—it lived?

Miss L. No; I mean that it was sacrificed. But it showed me no barrier is so impassable as the one a little child can raise.

Stonor (a light dawning). Was that why you ... was that why?

Miss L. (nods, speechless a moment). Day and night there it was!—between my thought of you and me. (He sits again, staring at her.) When I was most unhappy I would wake, thinking I heard it cry. It was my own crying I heard, but I seemed to have it in my arms. I suppose I was mad. I used to lie there in that lonely farmhouse pretending to hush it. It was so I hushed myself.

Stonor. I never knew——

Miss L. I didn't blame you. You couldn't risk being with me.

Stonor. You agreed that for both our sakes——

Miss L. Yes, you had to be very circumspect. You were so well known. Your autocratic father—your brilliant political future——

Stonor. Be fair. Our future—as I saw it then.

Miss L. Yes, it all hung on concealment. It must have looked quite simple to you. You didn't know that the ghost of a child that had never seen the light, the frail thing you meant to sweep aside and forget—have swept aside and forgotten—you didn't know it was strong enough to push you out of my life. (Lower with an added intensity.) It can do more. (Leans over him and whispers.) It can push that girl out. (Stonor's face changes.) It can do more still.

Stonor. Are you threatening me?

Miss L. No, I am preparing you.

Stonor. For what?

Miss L. For the work that must be done. Either with your help—or that girl's.

(Stonor lifts his eyes a moment.)

Miss L. One of two things. Either her life, and all she has, given to this new service—or a Ransom, if I give her up to you.

Stonor. I see. A price. Well——?

Miss L. (looks searchingly in his face, hesitates and shakes her head). Even if I could trust you to pay—no, it would be a poor bargain to give her up for anything you could do.

Stonor (rising). In spite of your assumption—she may not be your tool.

Miss L. You are horribly afraid she is! But you are wrong. Don't think it's merely I that have got hold of Jean Dunbarton.

Stonor (angrily). Who else?

Miss L. The New Spirit that's abroad.

(Stonor turns away with an exclamation and begins to pace, sentinel-like, up and down before Jean's door.)

Miss L. How else should that inexperienced girl have felt the new loyalty and responded as she did?

Stonor (under his breath). "New" indeed—however little loyal.

Miss L. Loyal above all. But no newer than electricity was when it first lit up the world. It had been there since the world began—waiting to do away with the dark. So has the thing you're fighting.

Stonor (his voice held down to its lowest register). The thing I'm fighting is nothing more than one person's hold on a highly sensitive imagination. I consented to this interview with the hope—— (A gesture of impotence.) It only remains for me to show her your true motive is revenge.

Miss L. Once say that to her and you are lost!

(Stonor motionless; his look is the look of a man who sees happiness slipping away.)

Miss L. I know what it is that men fear. It even seems as if it must be through fear that your enlightenment will come. That is why I see a value in Jean Dunbarton far beyond her fortune.

(Stonor lifts his eyes dully and fixes them on Vida's face.)

Miss L. More than any girl I know—if I keep her from you—that gentle, inflexible creature could rouse in men the old half-superstitious fear——

Stonor. "Fear?" I believe you are mad.

Miss L. "Mad." "Unsexed." These are the words to-day. In the Middle Ages men cried out "Witch!" and burnt her—the woman who served no man's bed or board.

Stonor. You want to make that poor child believe——

Miss L. She sees for herself we've come to a place where we find there's a value in women apart from the value men see in them. You teach us not to look to you for some of the things we need most. If women must be freed by women, we have need of such as—(her eyes go to Jean's door)—who knows? She may be the new Joan of Arc.

Stonor (aghast). That she should be the sacrifice!

Miss L. You have taught us to look very calmly on the sacrifice of women. Men tell us in every tongue it's "a necessary evil."

(Stonor stands rooted, staring at the ground.)

Miss L. One girl's happiness—against a thing nobler than happiness for thousands—who can hesitate?—Not Jean.

Stonor. Good God! Can't you see that this crazed campaign you'd start her on—even if it's successful, it can only be so through the help of men? What excuse shall you make your own soul for not going straight to the goal?

Miss L. You think we wouldn't be glad to go straight to the goal?

Stonor. I do. I see you'd much rather punish me and see her revel in a morbid self-sacrifice.

Miss L. You say I want to punish you only because, like most men, you won't take the trouble to understand what we do want—or how determined we are to have it. You can't kill this new spirit among women. (Going nearer.) And you couldn't make a greater mistake than to think it finds a home only in the exceptional, or the unhappy. It's so strange, Geoffrey, to see a man like you as much deluded as the Hyde Park loafers who say to Ernestine Blunt, "Who's hurt your feelings?" Why not realise (going quite close to him) this is a thing that goes deeper than personal experience? And yet (lowering her voice and glancing at the door), if you take only the narrowest personal view, a good deal depends on what you and I agree upon in the next five minutes.

Stonor (bringing her farther away from the door). You recommend my realising the larger issues. But in your ambition to attach that girl to the chariot wheels of "Progress," you quite ignore the fact that people fitter for such work—the men you look to enlist in the end—are ready waiting to give the thing a chance.

Miss L. Men are ready! What men?

Stonor (avoiding her eyes, picking his words). Women have themselves to blame that the question has grown so delicate that responsible people shrink—for the moment—from being implicated in it.

Miss L. We have seen the "shrinking."

Stonor. Without quoting any one else, I might point out that the New Antagonism seems to have blinded you to the small fact that I, for one, am not an opponent.

Miss L. The phrase has a familiar ring. We have heard it from four hundred and twenty others.

Stonor. I spoke, if I may say so, of some one who would count. Some one who can carry his party along with him—or risk a seat in the Cabinet.

Miss L. (quickly). Did you mean you are ready to do that?

Stonor. An hour ago I was.

Miss L. Ah!... an hour ago.

Stonor. Exactly. You don't understand men. They can be led. They can't be driven. Ten minutes before you came into the room I was ready to say I would throw in my political lot with this Reform.

Miss L. And now...?

Stonor. Now you block my way by an attempt at coercion. By forcing my hand you give my adherence an air of bargain-driving for a personal end. Exactly the mistake of the ignorant agitators of your "Union," as you call it. You have a great deal to learn. This movement will go forward, not because of the agitation, but in spite of it. There are men in Parliament who would have been actively serving the Reform to-day ... as actively as so vast a constitutional change——

Miss L. (smiles faintly). And they haven't done it because——

Stonor. Because it would have put a premium on breaches of decent behaviour. (He takes a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket.) Look here!

Miss L. (flushes with excitement as she reads the telegram). This is very good. I see only one objection.

Stonor. Objection!

Miss L. You haven't sent it.

Stonor. That is your fault.

Miss L. When did you write this?

Stonor. Just before you came in—when——(He glances at the door.)

Miss L. Ah! It must have pleased Jean—that message. (Offers him back the paper.)

(Stonor astonished at her yielding it up so lightly, and remembering Jean had not so much as read it. He throws himself heavily into a chair and drops his head in his hands.)

Miss L. I could drive a hard-and-fast bargain with you, but I think I won't. If both love and ambition urge you on, perhaps——(She gazes at the slack, hopeless figure with its sudden look of age—goes over silently and stands by his side.) After all, life hasn't been quite fair to you——

(He raises his heavy eyes.)

You fall out of one ardent woman's dreams into another's.

Stonor. You may as well tell me—do you mean to——?

Miss L. To keep you and her apart? No.

Stonor (for the first time tears come into his eyes. After a moment he holds out his hand). What can I do for you?

(Miss Levering shakes her head—speechless.)

Stonor. For the real you. Not the Reformer, or the would-be politician—for the woman I so unwillingly hurt. (As she turns away, struggling with her feeling, he lays a detaining hand on her arm.) You may not believe it, but now that I understand, there is almost nothing I wouldn't do to right that old wrong.

Miss L. There's nothing to be done. You can never give me back my child.

Stonor (at the anguish in Vida's face his own has changed). Will that ghost give you no rest?

Miss L. Yes, oh, yes. I see life is nobler than I knew. There is work to do.

Stonor (stopping her as she goes towards the folding doors). Why should you think that it's only you, these ten years have taught something to? Why not give even a man credit for a willingness to learn something of life, and for being sorry—profoundly sorry—for the pain his instruction has cost others? You seem to think I've taken it all quite lightly. That's not fair. All my life, ever since you disappeared, the thought of you has hurt. I would give anything I possess to know you—were happy again.

Miss L. Oh, happiness!

Stonor (significantly). Why shouldn't you find it still. Miss L. (stares an instant). I see! She couldn't help telling about Allen Trent—Lady John couldn't.

Stonor. You're one of the people the years have not taken from, but given more to. You are more than ever.... You haven't lost your beauty.

Miss L. The gods saw it was so little effectual, it wasn't worth taking away. (She stands looking out into the void.) One woman's mishap?—what is that? A thing as trivial to the great world as it's sordid in most eyes. But the time has come when a woman may look about her, and say, "What general significance has my secret pain? Does it 'join on' to anything?" And I find it does. I'm no longer merely a woman who has stumbled on the way. I'm one (she controls with difficulty the shake in her voice) who has got up bruised and bleeding, wiped the dust from her hands and the tears from her face, and said to herself not merely, "Here's one luckless woman! but—here is a stone of stumbling to many. Let's see if it can't be moved out of other women's way." And she calls people to come and help. No mortal man, let alone a woman, by herself, can move that rock of offence. But (with a sudden sombre flame of enthusiasm) if many help, Geoffrey, the thing can be done.

Stonor (looks at her with wondering pity). Lord! how you care!

Miss L. (touched by his moved face). Don't be so sad. Shall I tell you a secret? Jean's ardent dreams needn't frighten you, if she has a child. That—from the beginning, it was not the strong arm—it was the weakest—the little, little arms that subdued the fiercest of us.

(Stonor puts out a pitying hand uncertainly towards her. She does not take it, but speaks with great gentleness.)

You will have other children, Geoffrey—for me there was to be only one. Well, well—(she brushes her tears away)—since men alone have tried and failed to make a decent world for the little children to live in—it's as well some of us are childless. (Quietly taking up her hat and cloak.) Yes, we are the ones who have no excuse for standing aloof from the fight.

Stonor. Vida!

Miss L. What?

Stonor. You've forgotten something. (As she looks back he is signing the message.) This.

Elizabeth Robins, Votes for Women, Mint Editions, 2013, pp. 103-115.