Waste | Page 5

yards start and race you to the billiard room.
LUCY DAVENPORT. Will you wear my skirt? Oh ... Grandmamma's
thinking me vulgar.
LADY DAVENPORT. [Without prejudice.] Why, my dear, freedom of
limb is worth having ... and perhaps it fits better with freedom of
tongue.
FARRANT. [In the proper avuncular tone.] I'll play you both ... and I'd
race you both if you weren't so disgracefully young.
AMY O'CONNELL has reached an open window.
AMY O'CONNELL. I shall go for a walk with my neuralgia.

MRS. FARRANT. Poor thing!
AMY O'CONNELL. The moon's good for it.
LUCY DAVENPORT. Shall you come, Aunt Julia?
MRS. FARRANT. [In flat protest.] No, I will not sit up while you play
billiards.
MRS. O'CONNELL goes out through the one window, stands for a
moment, wistfully romantic, gazing at KENT are standing at the other,
looking across the lawn.
FARRANT. Horsham still arguing with Maconochie. They're got to
Botany now.
WALTER KENT. Demonstrating something with a ... what's that
thing?
WALTER goes out.
FARRANT. [With a throw of his head towards the distant HORSHAM.]
He was so bored with our politics ... having to give his opinion too. We
could just hear your piano.
And he follows WALTER.
MRS. FARRANT. Take Amy O'Connell that lace thing, will you,
Lucy?
LUCY DAVENPORT. [Her tone expressing quite wonderfully her
sentiments towards the owner.] Don't you think she'd sooner catch
cold?
She catches it up and follows the two men; then after looking round
impatiently, swings off in the direction MRS. O'CONNELL took. The
three women now left together are at their ease.
FRANCES TREBELL. Did you expect Mr. Blackborough to get on

well with Henry?
MRS. FARRANT. He has become a millionaire by appreciating clever
men when he met them.
LADY DAVENPORT. Yes, Julia, but his political conscience is
comparatively new-born.
MRS. FARRANT. Well, Mamma, can we do without Mr. Trebell?
LADY DAVENPORT. Everyone seems to think you'll come back with
something of a majority.
MRS. FARRANT. [A little impatient.] What's the good of that? The
Bill can't be brought into the Lords ... and who's going to take
Disestablishment through the Commons for us? Not Eustace Fowler ...
not Mr. Blackborough ... not Lord Charles ... not George!
LADY DAVENPORT. [Warningly.] Not all your brilliance as a hostess
will keep Mr. Trebell in a Tory Cabinet.
MRS. FARRANT. [With wilful avoidance of the point.] Cyril Horsham
is only too glad.
LADY DAVENPORT. Because you tell him he ought to be.
FRANCES TREBELL. [Coming to the rescue.] There is this. Henry
has never exactly called himself a Liberal. He really is elected
independently.
MRS. FARRANT. I wonder will all the garden-cities become
pocket-boroughs.
FRANCES TREBELL. I think he has made a mistake.
MRS. FARRANT. It makes things easier now ... his having kept his
freedom.
FRANCES TREBELL. I think it's a mistake to stand outside a system.

There's an inhumanity in that amount of detachment ...
MRS. FARRANT. [Brilliantly.] I think a statesman may be a little
inhuman.
LADY DAVENPORT. [With keenness.] Do you mean superhuman?
It's not the same thing, you know.
MRS. FARRANT. I know.
LADY DAVENPORT. Most people don't know.
MRS. FARRANT. [Proceeding with her cynicism.] Humanity
achieves ... what? Housekeeping and children.
FRANCES TREBELL. As far as a woman's concerned.
MRS. FARRANT. [A little mockingly.] Now, Mamma, say that is as far
as a woman's concerned.
LADY DAVENPORT. My dear, you know I don't think so.
MRS. FARRANT. We may none of us think so. But there's our
position ... bread and butter and a certain satisfaction until ... Oh,
Mamma, I wish I were like you ... beyond all the passions of life.
LADY DAVENPORT. [With great vitality.] I'm nothing of the sort. It's
my egoism's dead ... that's an intimation of mortality.
MRS. FARRANT. I accept the snub. But I wonder what I'm to do with
myself for the next thirty years.
FRANCES TREBELL. Help Lord Horsham to govern the country.
JULIA FARRANT gives a little laugh and takes up the subject this
time.
MRS. FARRANT. Mamma ... how many people, do you think, believe
that Cyril's grande passion for me takes that form?

LADY DAVENPORT. Everyone who knows Cyril and most people
who know you.
MRS. FARRANT. Otherwise I seem to have fulfilled my mission in
life. The boys are old enough to go to school. George and I have
become happily unconscious of each other.
FRANCES TREBELL. [With sudden energy of mind.] Till I was forty I
never realised the fact that most women must express themselves
through men.
MRS. FARRANT. [Looking at FRANCES a little curiously.] Didn't
your instinct lead you to marry ... or did you fight against it?
FRANCES TREBELL. I don't know. Perhaps I had no vitality to spare.
LADY DAVENPORT. That boy is a long time proposing to