perfectly well. Sir George Crofts has told me the whole business.
MRS. WARREN. [Angrily.] Silly old—[She swallows an epithet, and then turns white at the narrowness of her escape from uttering it.]
VIVIE. Just so.
MRS. WARREN. He ought to have his tongue cut out. But I thought it was ended: you said you didn’t mind.
VIVIE. [Steadfastly.] Excuse me: I do mind. You explained how it came about. That does not alter it. [Mrs. Warren, silenced for a moment, looks forlornly at Vivie, who waits, secretly hoping that the combat is over. But the cunning expression comes back into Mrs. Warren’s face; and she bends across the table, sly and urgent, half whispering.]
MRS. WARREN. Vivie: do you know how rich I am?
VIVIE. I have no doubt you are very rich.
MRS. WARREN. But you don’t know all that that means; you’re too young. It means a new dress every day; it means theatres and balls every night; it means having the pick of all the gentlemen in Europe at your feet; it means a lovely house and plenty of servants; it means the choicest of eating and drinking; it means everything you like, everything you want, everything you can think of. And what are you here? A mere drudge, toiling and moiling early and late for your bare living and two cheap dresses a year. Think over it. [Soothingly.] You’re shocked, I know. I can enter into your feelings; and I think they do you credit; but trust me, nobody will blame you: you may take my word for that. I know what young girls are; and I know you’ll think better of it when you’ve turned it over in your mind.
VIVIE. So that’s how it is done, is it? You must have said all that to many a woman, to have it so pat.
MRS. WARREN. [Passionately.] What harm am I asking you to do? [Vivie turns away contemptuously. Mrs. Warren continues desperately.] Vivie: listen to me: you don’t understand: you were taught wrong on purpose: you don’t know what the world is really like.
VIVIE. [Arrested.] Taught wrong on purpose! What do you mean?
MRS. WARREN. I mean that you’re throwing away all your chances for nothing. You think that people are what they pretend to be: that the way you were taught at school and college to think right and proper is the way things really are. But it’s not: it’s all only a pretence, to keep the cowardly slavish common run of people quiet. Do you want to find that out, like other women, at forty, when you’ve thrown yourself away and lost your chances; or won’t you take it in good time now from your own mother, that loves you and swears to you that it’s truth: gospel truth? [Urgently.] Vivie: the big people, the clever people, the managing people, all know it. They do as I do, and think what I think. I know plenty of them. I know them to speak to, to introduce you to, to make friends of for you. I don’t mean anything wrong: that’s what you don’t understand: your head is full of ignorant ideas about me. What do the people that taught you know about life or about people like me? When did they ever meet me, or speak to me, or let anyone tell them about me? the fools! Would they ever have done anything for you if I hadn’t paid them? Haven’t I told you that I want you to be respectable? Haven’t I brought you up to be respectable? And how can you keep it up without my money and my influence and Lizzie’s friends? Can’t you see that you’re cutting your own throat as well as breaking my heart in turning your back on me?
VIVIE. I recognize the Crofts philosophy of life, mother. I heard it all from him that day at the Gardners’.
MRS. WARREN. You think I want to force that played-out old sot on you! I don’t, Vivie: on my oath I don’t.
VIVIE. It would not matter if you did: you would not succeed. [Mrs. Warren winces, deeply hurt by the implied indifference towards her affectionate intention. Vivie, neither understanding this nor concerning herself about it, goes on calmly.] Mother: you don’t at all know the sort of person I am. I don’t object to Crofts more than to any other coarsely built man of his class. To tell you the truth, I rather admire him for being strong-minded enough to enjoy himself in his own way and make plenty of money instead of living the usual shooting, hunting, dining-out, tailoring, loafing life of his set merely because all the rest do it. And I’m perfectly aware that if I’d been in the same circumstances as my aunt Liz, I’d have done exactly what she did. I don’t think I’m more prejudiced or straitlaced than you: I think I’m less. I’m certain I’m less sentimental. I know very well that fashionable morality is all a pretence, and that if I took your money and devoted the rest of my life to spending it fashionably, I might be as worthless and vicious as the silliest woman could possibly be without having a word said to me about it. But I don’t want to be worthless. I shouldn’t enjoy trotting about the park to advertise my dressmaker and carriage builder, or being bored at the opera to shew off a shop windowful of diamonds.
MRS. WARREN. [Bewildered.] But—
VIVIE. Wait a moment: I’ve not done. Tell me why you continue your business now that you are independent of it. Your sister, you told me, has left all that behind her. Why don’t you do the same?
MRS. WARREN. Oh, it’s all very easy for Liz: she likes good society, and has the air of being a lady. Imagine me in a cathedral town! Why, the very rooks in the trees would find me out even if I could stand the dulness of it. I must have work and excitement, or I should go melancholy mad. And what else is there for me to do? The life suits me: I’m fit for it and not for anything else. If I didn’t do it somebody else would; so I don’t do any real harm by it. And then it brings in money; and I like making money. No: it’s no use: I can’t give it up—not for anybody. But what need you know about it? I’ll never mention it. I’ll keep Crofts away. I’ll not trouble you much: you see I have to be constantly running about from one place to another. You’ll be quit of me altogether when I die.
VIVIE. No: I am my mother’s daughter. I am like you: I must have work, and must make more money than I spend. But my work is not your work, and my way is not your way. We must part. It will not make much difference to us: instead of meeting one another for perhaps a few months in twenty years, we shall never meet: that’s all.
MRS. WARREN. [Her voice stifled in tears.] Vivie: I meant to have been more with you: I did indeed.
VIVIE. It’s no use, mother: I am not to be changed by a few cheap tears and entreaties any more than you are, I daresay.
MRS. WARREN. [Wildly.] Oh, you call a mother’s tears cheap.
VIVIE. They cost you nothing; and you ask me to give you the peace and quietness of my whole life in exchange for them. What use would my company be to you if you could get it? What have we two in common that could make either of us happy together?
MRS. WARREN. [Lapsing recklessly into her dialect.] We’re mother and daughter. I want my daughter. I’ve a right to you. Who is to care for me when I’m old? Plenty of girls have taken to me like daughters and cried at leaving me; but I let them all go because I had you to look forward to. I kept myself lonely for you. You’ve no right to turn on me now and refuse to do your duty as a daughter.
VIVIE. [Jarred and antagonized by the echo of the slums in her mother’s voice.] My duty as a daughter! I thought we should come to that presently. Now once for all, mother, you want a daughter and Frank wants a wife. I don’t want a mother; and I don’t want a husband. I have spared neither Frank nor myself in sending him about his business. Do you think I will spare you?
MRS. WARREN. [Violently.] Oh, I know the sort you are: no mercy for yourself or anyone else. I know. My experience has done that for me anyhow: I can tell the pious, canting, hard, selfish woman when I meet her. Well, keep yourself to yourself: I don’t want you. But listen to this. Do you know what I would do with you if you were a baby again? aye, as sure
