Interior of Matthew Butterworth's cottage. The room has three doors, one leading directly outside, one to the lean-to shed which holds the hand-loom, the third to the stairs. The cottage is that of a prosperous artisan of 1820, and the general standard of comfort little higher than that of a modern slum. The room is in darkness and through the door is heard the monotonous clickety-clackety of a handloom. A brisk knock is heard at the front door, and as Mary Butterworth opens the door l., carrying a dip candle in an iron candlestick, the sound of the loom increases. She crosses, leaving candle on table and opens the front door. Outside are Joseph Healey, Martin Kelsall and Henri Callard.

Mary is fifty, dressed in a dark dress of linsey woolsey, with neckerchief of indigo blue printed cotton over her shoulders and a full apron of blue-and-white check round her waist. The men who enter are all obviously poorer. Joe Healey, the oldest of them, for instance, hopes in vain by buttoning high his waistcoat to hide the absence of a shirt. All wear clogs, breeches and coats more or less ragged and patched. Martin is twenty-four, thin to emaciation, but handsome and fervent. Henri carries himself well, wears his rags gallantly and his clothes are lighter coloured.

JOE (as Mary opens door). Is Matthew in, Mrs. Butterworth?

MARY (without standing from door). Yes. You'll hear his loom if you hearken.

JOE. It's a sound that isn't often heard outside the factory nowadays.

MARY. It's one that isn't often hushed in here. Matthew's busy.

HENRI (half entering. Mary gives back). Too busy to see us, Madame Butterworth?

JOE (entering and speaking importantly). Tell him the 'Friends of the People are here to see him on the people's business.

(Henri and Martin enter, Martin closing the door.)

MARY (raising the candle to their faces). I know you. I know you all. You, Joe Healey and young Martin Kendall, and you—you're the Frenchman.

HENRI (bowing). I am the Frenchman, madame.

MARY (replacing the candle, disgustedly). Radicals, the three of you.

JOE (reprovingly). We are Friends of the People.

MARY. Yes. Friends of yourselves.

JOE. Yes, of ourselves and of you and of Matthew there. We are the people.

MARY (militantly). You're Radicals. And my Matthew's not a redcap like that Frenchie there that's fled his country to come disturbing quiet English folk with his nonsense.

HENRI. I left my country when the Bourbons entered it again. (Rhetorically.) The blood I'd shed for freedom——

JOE (interrupting). We'll talk to Matthew about all that.

MARY (standing, barring the door). You will not talk to Matthew. I'll not have my man made a Radical, and run his head into a noose for the sake of——

MARTIN (quietly). For the sake of freedom.

MARY. We're free enough.

HENRI. You are free to starve. To be slaves of the cotton masters, who treat you worse than any grand seigneur would have treated his peasants under the Bourbons.

MARY (dryly). Well, Matthew's busy.

JOE. He's not too busy to attend to us. We want him out.

MARY. And you'll not get him.

JOE. I think we shall. (Calling.) Matthew! Matthew Butterworth!

MARY. Yes, you may call. You'll burst your lungs before he'll hear in there. He's working. You're idling. Don't try to interrupt a better man.

(Henri makes as if to force her from door, Joe checks him.)

JOE. That's why we want him with us. Because we know him for the best weaver in these parts. Because he's treated by the master different from us and works at home instead of being driven into the factory. We want the best man on the people's side and none of us but gives old Matthew best. That's what we think of your husband, Mrs. Butterworth.

MARY. And it's what I think, so you needn't fancy that it's news to me. He's better sense than to go wasting time on a pack of crazy Radicals.

(The loom stops, the door is thrown open and Matthew speaks off)

MATTHEW. Mary, fetch that candle back. I cannot see to weave properly with only one.

JOE. Let your loom be, Matthew, and come here. We've need of you.

(Matthew enters in his shirt sleeves, stout waistcoat and breeches. He is a man of sixty, solidly built with square face and grey hair, bowed with bending to his loom.) Matthew. What's the to-do about?

MARY (holding his arm). They've come to trap you, Matthew.

MATTHEW. Trap me? They'll be wide awake.

MARY. Don't listen to them, Matt. They're Radicals.

JOE We're Reformers. You know us, Matthew.

MATTHEW. Aye, I know you. You, Martin! You become a Radical?

MARTIN. Empty bellies make Radicals, Mr. Butterworth. Empty bellies and the Corn Tax and bread at thirteenpence the quartern loaf.

MATTHEW. Empty bellies make fools then. I can hear you've picked up the Radical cant. What do you want with me?

JOE. We've come to reason with you, Matthew.

MARY. Oh, if you're going to listen to them, I'll sit in yonder.

MATTHEW (sharply). Don't touch the loom, now.

(Exit Mary.)

Well, what is it? I haven't time to spend on argument.

HENRI. Then give us your advice, Mr. Butterworth, your help.

MATTHEW. I'm not a politician.

(Martin sits wearily on settle.)

JOE. Maybe you're not. But you're a man. And you know how things are with us. They're different with you.

MATTHEW. And why?

HENRI. Because you're the favourite of Mr. Barlow.

MATTHEW. If you weren't an ignorant Frenchman you'd suffer for those words. I'm not a favourite. It isn't me. It's my work. There's never been a yard of faulty cloth made on my loom. It's good. It's the honest work of a man that takes a pride in making it good, not like your rotten machine-made muck that's turned out at the factory. That's why Mr. Barlow sends me yarn to weave. He gets his special price for the cloth I weave and he knows it pays to let me weave it. That's not making a favourite of me. It's business.

JOE (quietly). It's making an exception of you, Matthew. You're working all the hours God sends, but you're drawing good money every week and you're living in comfort with your missus and your daughter both at home. My girls are in the factory and the wages of the lot of us don't keep the cold and hunger from our door.

MATTHEW. What else do you expect but distress when you've let them get machines to do the work of men? It's Arkwright's spinning frames and Watt's steam engines that take the bread from your mouths. It isn't Barlow's, nor Heppenstall's, nor Whitworth's over the hill, nor Mottershead's, nor any of the manufacturers. It's steel and iron that have got you down, and more fools you for letting them.

HENRI. You talk like one of us already.

MATTHEW. Aye? Only I'm not one of you.

JOE. Is it our fault? We can't all weave like you. We're not all master craftsmen with looms of our own and no debts hanging round our necks. The machines are there. We can't get beyond it.

HENRI. We can break the machines.

MATTHEW (sharply). No violence. Violence never did anybody good.

HENRI. We did no good in France until we took the Bastille.

MATTHEW. And did that do any good? You're here, in exile, because your countrymen forgot the Bastille and welcomed Louis Bourbon back.

JOE (soberly). I'm against violence myself till all else fails. That what we want of you, Matt. Help us to escape violence.

MATT. What help?

JOE. Will you go to London?

MATT. London?

JOE. Yes. (Very earnestly.) They don't know there. They cannot know or else they wouldn't let things go on and let poor weavers starve. Eight shillings have I taken from the factory this week. Eight shillings and the loaf at thirteenpence! We want to tell the Government we're starving while the masters stink of brass. Wages must go higher or taxes lower. They must do something.

MATTHEW. Why should I go? I'm not a factory hand.

HENRI. That's why they'll listen to a word from you. We'll go too, some of us, but there's little use in that because we're known to be reformers. There are Government spies in every Democratic Club. You can hardly trust your nearest friend. The spies are everywhere.

MATTHEW. How do you make out they don't know about us, then?

JOE. They can't. Even Parliament men aren't fiends from Hell.

MATTHEW. It's no good going to London. Think of the March of the Blanketeers.

JOE. Think of it! Wasn't I one of them? One of the thousands who met on Ardwick Green, and the hundreds that met the Yeomanry at Stockport, and the tens that struggled through to Macclesfield?

MATTHEW (scornfully). Yes. You got as far as Macclesfield. Do you think they'll let you get to London to tell them? Do you think they want to know? And if they do get there, and tell them, the manufacturers will be there first telling them another tale, and whose tale do you think they'll believe? Yours or theirs? Going to London's a fool's errand. They do know and they don't care. They're South, we're North, and what the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve at. You made your beds, when you let Arkwright set up his machinery, and you've to lie on them.

MARTIN (rising dejectedly). God help the poor!

HENRI (turning fiercely on him). God helps those that help themselves. I'll hear you weavers sing the Marseillaise before I die.

JOE (to Matthew). You're against violence and you're against politics. What do you favour?

MATTHEW (grimly). I favour work and I favour my loom, and if you've said your say I'll be getting back to it.

JOE. Aye, that's the old story. Work, and every man for himself and his hand against his neighbour, while the masters join to keep us down.

MATTHEW. I've something else to do than falling out with my bread and cheese. I'm not a politician, I'm a weaver, and I've not got time for two jobs. I'm not a Republican neither. I throw the shuttle and I don't throw stones.

HENRI. Coward. It is because you do not dare.

MATTHEW (contemptuously). It's well for you you're French and it's known you'd break if an Englishman touched you with his hand.

JOE. It's well for you you're prosperous with your loom at home and your women at home and your daughter dressed like——

(Enter Ruth Butterworth by the front door. She is twenty-one, dark, passionate, tall, in a plain, narrow-skirted, short-sleeved gown of woolsey, with a bright-coloured cotton handkerchief crossed over the bust and tied at the back of the short waist, dress low at the neck, straw bonnet and boots.)—like she is. (Preparing to go.) I'm grieved we've failed to move you, but you're better off than us, and it's the skill of your hands you have to thank for it. Machinery has played the very hangment with the rest of us. Good-night, Matt.

MATTHEW. Good-night, Joe Healey. (They shake. Matthew looks contemptuously at Henri.) Take your Republican with you. I've a word in season to say to young Martin Kelsall.

(Exeunt Joe and Henri. Ruth stands by settle.)

Now, my lad, you came here to see me a week ago.

MARTIN (looking guiltily at Ruth, who shows surprise). Yes, Mr. Butterworth.

MATTHEW. You said nowt about being a Radical then. Martin. I came on other business.

MATTHEW. And you said nowt about starving bellies. If you can't make brass enough to fill one belly, you'll be hard put to it to fill two.

RUTH. That's all over, father.

MATTHEW. Is it? Did he speak to you?

RUTH. Yes. I told him "no."

MARTIN (to Ruth). Have I no chance?

MATTHEW. A chance of what? Of taking Ruth from here, where she's all a woman wants, and making her starve alongside of you and expecting her to go into the factory to help you to make a livelihood. My daughter's not for your sort, my lad.

RUTH. I told him that.

MARTIN. Yes, you told me, but I haven't finished hoping yet.

MATTHEW. If you're hoping for a wife to work for you, you've come to the wrong shop this time.

MARTIN. You're a proud man, Mr. Butterworth, and, Ruth, you're proud and all. I'm just a weaver lad that loves you and 'ud work till I drop for you. And maybe you'll find out your mistake some day. Proud you may be and proud you are, but if you're not above taking a warning from me, you'll be careful where you walk o' nights. There's company that's dangerous for you.

MATTHEW (suspiciously). What's that?

RUTH (quickly). Who cares what a man says when he's sent about his business?

MATTHEW. You're right there, lass. It's not for me to take notice of his words.

MARTIN. Then take notice of this, Ruth. I love you. I always shall. No matter what happens, I always shall. And I'm a patient man. I'm used to waiting.

RUTH. You'll be more used to it if you're going to wait for me.

MARTIN (doggedly). I'm going to wait.

MATTHEW (opening the door, grimly). Good-night to you. (Slight pause, then Martin moves to door.)

MARTIN (going). Good-night.

(Exit Martin.)

MATTHEW. I'll be getting back to my loom. I've wasted too much time to-night.

(Exit Matthew. The sound of the loom is heard, and, immediately she hears it, Ruth opens the front door and calls.)

RUTH. Martin! Martin, come back a minute.

(After a moment Martin reciters.)

MARTIN. You want me?

RUTH. I want to speak to you before you go.

MARTIN (advancing). Ruth!

RUTH. No. Don't mistake me. I haven't changed my mind, but I want you to understand. Just now, you tried to warn me.

MARTIN. Yes? I warn you again. It isn't safe.

RUTH. You mean Guy Barlow?

MARTIN. Yes, you know I mean Guy Barlow.

RUTH. That's what I wanted to be certain of. I wanted you to know that what I do is done with open eyes.

MARTIN. You're playing with fire.

RUTH. It won't be me that's burnt. I've got my purpose clear and strong before me, Martin. It's you put this thing in my mind and I'm going through with it for your sake.

MARTIN. For my sake! A lot you care for me.

RUTH. That's neither here nor there.

MARTIN. No more than a month ago I'd have broken the jaw of any man that said you weren't my wench. We hadn't spoke it out to each other, but I thought it was that sure it didn't need the speaking. And then you changed and I found out what changed you. So I thought I'd save you if I could. I asked you, and you said "No." I asked your father and I got my answer to-night. And now, you'll go your way, the woman I love. God knows what's changed you, but——

RUTH. Nothing has changed me, Martin.

MARTIN. Then marry me.

RUTH. No.

MARTIN. You don't love me.

RUTH. I haven't said I did.

MARTIN. Yes, you have. Not in words, I grant you, but if looks mean anything you've told it me a hundred times. Do you think he'll marry you? He won't. Marriage is not what Guy Barlow wants. I could tell you tales——

RUTH. You needn't. I'll make him marry me.

MARTIN. He didn't marry the others.

RUTH. Had they my beauty?

MARTIN. Beauty! Yes, you're beautiful. By God, you are.

RUTH. I've the gift of beauty, Martin, and I'm going to use it.

MARTIN. Because he's rich, and I'm poor.

RUTH. No, because he's powerful over others and I want power over him. When you and I have gone our walks and been together on the moors, did we talk of nothing but the stars? You told me dreams, dreams of all the things you'd do if some great god gave you the power. It's I shall have that power, Martin, and use it in the way you taught me. Your thoughts, your dreams—and my pretty face gives me the chance to take your dreams and make them live. That's what I'm going to do.

MARTIN. It's nothing but another dream.

RUTH. It's real this time, Martin.

MARTIN. But we did talk of the stars sometimes, and of ourselves and——

RUTH. That was the dream. That was happiness.

MARTIN. Why shouldn't we be happy? It's a crime to throw yourself away on him for the sake of us.

RUTH. No, it's a crusade. I hope We shall be happy, but not together, Martin. I shan't do it all in a day, even after he has married me, but I shall manage him in time, and all this misery shall cease. You do believe I shall, don't you, Martin? You do approve?

MARTIN (after a pause). God give you strength.

RUTH. I think He will. You understand now, Martin?

MARTIN. I understand. (Slight pause.) Ruth, are you sure?

RUTH (calmly). I'm going through with it. Good-night, Martin.

MARTIN (approaching her, then backing as she gives no encouragement). Good-night, Ruth.

(Exit Martin. Ruth closes the door, then takes off her hat as Mary enters.)

MARY (sourly). So you've come in. And where have you been?

RUTH. Out.

MARY. You've a fancy for going out o' nights.

RUTH. I suppose I'm old enough to please myself when I go out.

MARY. I suppose you think you are. Times are changed since I was young. I'd have got the rolling-pin at my head if I'd answered your grandmother back the way you answer me. I'd never any time for going out at nights. Too busy spinning. (She busies herself getting out crockery, etc., putting it on table without cloth.)

RUTH. Machines spin now.

MARY. And women and children watch the machines. But of course I mustn't say owt of that. Send you to the factory and I'd know where to put my hand on you. But no. What's good enough for others isn't good enough for you.

RUTH. They're fitted for the factory.

MARY. And what are you fitted for? Nowt, but to fancy yourself a fine lady. I know if I was your father, I'd have you working for the bread you eat and the clothes you wear, like every other girl about. But he's got his way and made an idler of you.

RUTH. Perhaps he's right.

MARY. It's not my way of bringing up a girl.

RUTH. Never mind, mother. I'll be surprising you one of these days.

MARY. Yes. You're always in the right. You're like your father. Got stiff neck with pride.

RUTH. Maybe, I've cause for pride.

MARY. And maybe you haven't, and all, and if you have I've never seen cause for it.

RUTH. You shall do very soon.

MARY. You're hiding something.

RUTH. It won't be hidden long.

MARY. What is it now? Out with it, lass.

RUTH. Not yet, mother. I'll tell you when there's anything to tell.

(A knock is heard. Mary opens door after momentary surprise. Outside are Ephraim and Guy Barlow. Ephraim is a man of about sixty, well covered with flesh, clean-shaven, grey, square in the face, but not too strong of feature, wearing a short-bodied, long-tailed bottle-green coat, breeches to match, waistcoat, ruffled shirt frill, low-crowned black beaver hat with narrow curly rim, and thick draft top-coat, long in the skirt and with a huge collar Guy is twenty-eight, with fair hair and a stronger face than his father. He is clean-shaven and his clothes more fashionable and of finer material than the stout durable cloth Ephraim prefers. He has trousers instead of knee breeches.)

EPHRAIM. Is this Matt Butterworth's?

MARY. Surely, Mr. Barlow. Will you step inside? (Holding door open.)

EPHRAIM (entering). It's what I came to do.

(Guy follows. Mary closes door.)

That'll be Matt at his loom?

MARY. Yes. I'll bring him to you. (Crosses, opens door.) Matt, here's the master.

MATTHEW (entering, putting on his coat). The master! Ephraim. Good evening, Matt.

MATTHEW. You'll sit down, won't you?

EPHRAIM. Thanks.

MATTHEW. And you too, Mr. Guy.

GUY. Thank you.

MATT. Well, I'm glad to see you here, and if so be as bread and cheese and ale are not beneath you, there's enough for all.

EPHRAIM (half heartedly). Well, thankee, Matt Butterworth——

GUY (interrupting). No. It's business brings us here, not eating. (To Matthew.) My father has something to say to you.

(At a glance from Matthew, Mary and Ruth go out.)

EPHRAIM. Yes, I thought I'd come and tell you here instead of sending for you up to factory.

MATTHEW (grimly). It's as well you did come. You'd not have got me there by sending. I've never entered factory gate and never will.

EPHRAIM (good-naturedly). You're a pig-headed old stick in-the-mud, Matt. You won't move with the times.

MATTHEW. Not when the times move to factories.

EPHRAIM. Well, well, you're an obstinate fellow. What's wrong with factories?

MATTHEW. What isn't wrong? They're bits of hell spewed up on earth.

GUY. You'd better keep a civil tongue in your head.

MATTHEW. I'm talking to your father, Mr. Guy, and we've known each other long enough to speak what's in our minds. You're a young man and the young get used to changes quickly. You find machines a natural state of things. I'll tell you how things were before the factories came and progress got a hold over everything. I'd open yon door in a morning and I'd see children playing in the fields. Where are the children now? Driven into your factory at five in the morning pretty nigh as soon as they can walk and thrashed with a cane to keep the poor little devils awake when all the nature in them's crying out for sleep. I'd go into a neighbour's cottage and I'd see a loom with a warp on it and a weaver taking pride in his work. You've taken the work away from men and given it to machines. And the worst is the machines don't care. You send out miles of cloth for every inch we used to weave, and every yard you send as full of faults as an egg of meat. It's that you've done with your factories, young sir. You've broken the weaver's spirit and you've killed the joy he used to take in honest craftsmanship. It's quality that used to count and a man 'ud think shame to himself to produce a cloth that's full of weaving faults. There are no weavers now. They're servants of a steam engine.

GUY. I'm sorry it upsets you, Mr. Butterworth, but facts are too much for you. Hand looms are played out.

MATTHEW (intensely convinced). Never, while good workmanship endures. If they want the best, they'll come to the handloom weaver for it.

GUY. Yes, but you see they don't want the best.

MATTHEW. They want designs that a man conceives in joy and executes with pride. They want a cloth that shows he's taken pride in making it, and knows it's his design and not a copy of another's.

GUY. We can sell a hundred pieces of the same design with as little trouble as your one.

MATTHEW. And which 'ull wear longest?

GUY. We don't want cloth to wear, we want it to sell.

MATTHEW (dismissing him, sadly). Mr. Guy, it's a hard thing to say of your father's son, but I've a fear you're a godless youth. (To Ephraim.) What was it you wanted of me, Mr. Barlow?

EPHRAIM (awkwardly). You've made it rather hard to tell you that. I didn't know you thought so badly of the factories. (Turning.) Guy, I think, perhaps——

GUY (curtly). No. If you won't speak out, I will.

(Slight pause. Then Ephraim gives Guy leave by a glance.) We want you to come into the factory, Butterworth.

MATTHEW (startled). I? In factory?

GUY. Yes.

MATTHEW. But——

GUY. You're the last man on our pay-sheets working out. We must have uniformity. We want you in.

MATTHEW. You want me, Mr. Guy. I can see who 'tis I have to thank for this. It's you that have brought the old master here to stand by while you say these things to me.

GUY. Well, as it happened, you're so far wrong that I'd no intention of coming in at all, only I was going home from a walk (glancing away, as if after Ruth), and met him on his way here.

MATTHEW (to Ephraim). Mr. Barlow, it isn't your wish that I——

EPHRAIM. Well, Matt, we've had complaints. (Querulously.) Weavers nowadays are a grumbling, discontented lot, and——

MATTHEW. Aye. Power-loom weavers are, and have cause to be. Before you started factories folk could save. It was a saying here that every man in the valley owned his own house and the one next door to it.

EPHRAIM. They complain I make a favourite of you, and, as Guy says, we must have uniformity. It's just a point of discipline.

MATTHEW. Yes, I know what discipline means. Discipline means ringing them into your factory at five in the morning and out at seven in the evening, and uniformity means fifty looms in rows all tied to a steam engine and every loom weaving the same pattern.

GUY. Look here, Butterworth, you were working when we came in. Working at nine o'clock at night.

MATTHEW. Do I complain of that? Not me. I can please myself what hours I work. It's nowt to me what time the engine stops. My engine's here. (Indicating his arms.)

GUY. Yes, and because it is, you never let it rest. Come into the factory and you've finished at seven.

MATTHEW. I'm sent away at seven. I'm under orders. I'm my own master here, Mr. Guy, and have been all my life. If I want to work, I work, and if I want to play, I play, and there's nobody to stop me, whether it's tramping over the moors getting my mind choke full of the new designs that come to me when I'm walking through the green, resting my eyes, or whether it's a cock-fight and a bellyful of ale—and you've no need to look shocked neither, Mr. Barlow, for I've seen time afore you got meddling with machines when you went cock-fighting yourself, and you weren't too big in those days to drink with me, too. And now you're telling me to come and weave in factory.

EPHRAIM. Oh, nay, Matt, I'm not.

MATTHEW. Well, I don't know. You've stood there and heard him tell me I'm to come in.

EPHRAIM. But not as weaver, Matt.

MATTHEW. What then?

EPHRAIM. As overlooker, and not a man in Lancashire that's better fitted for it.

MATTHEW (soberly weighing it). Aye. That's no more than truth.

EPHRAIM. I'm not flattering. I'm a business man, and I'm choosing the best man for the job.

MATTHEW. And I'm refusing it, for I'm a business man and I've got a better job. I've an old loom in yonder and as long as she hangs together I'll go on weaving cloth as cloth should be woven, by the skilful hand of a man to designs of his own contriving. To hell with uniformity. There's beauty in a loom and nowt but beastly ugliness in a row of looms.

GUY (coldly). Where do you get your yarn from, Butter-worth?

MATTHEW. Why, from you.

GUY. And you've been selling your cloth to us?

MATTHEW. Yes.

GUY. We can take no more.

MATTHEW (staggered). You can't take my cloth, my beautiful cloth?

EPHRAIM (with sympathy). It's true, Matt. Good cloth means a good price and people won't pay it.

MATTHEW. It's your fault, then. That's what you've brought them to. You've spoilt them with your factory rubbish.

GUY. They want cheap cloth. We provide it. Yours is dear. We can't sell it.

MATTHEW. Then I'll sell my own. I'll find buyers.

EPHRAIM. It's no use, Matt. Take my word for it, there are no customers to-day for cloth like yours. What between paying the country's bill for licking Bonaparte and power looms for silk and linen there's no demand for cotton cloth of your quality.

GUY. And you'll get no more yarn from us.

MATTHEW. You're not the only ones.

GUY. Nor from others. We're going to make an end of the whole breed of hand-loom weavers.

MATTHEW. We'll not be ended easy.

GUY. We want you in the factories. The factories are hungering for the right men.

MATTHEW. And men are hungry because of the factories. Don't tell me my cloth won't sell. It's cloth that sells itself.

EPHRAIM. Don't you believe me, Matt?

MATTHEW. I don't believe you know what my cloth's like. Do you see it yourself up yonder?

EPHRAIM. Well—no.

MATTHEW (going to door). Then come in here and I'll show you. You'll not be telling me then there are no decent housewives left to buy a cloth like mine. (Exit.)

GUY (to Ephraim, who is following). Oh, what's the good of wasting time on him?

EPHRAIM. Best humour him, Guy. Don't come. I'll get him round.

GUY. Psh! You're too soft with the old fool.

EPHRAIM. And you're too hard. Matt and I were friends before you were born.

(Exit Ephraim. Guy moves impatiently, then sits on table. Enter Ruth.)

RUTH (surprised and not cordial). I thought you'd gone. I heard no voices.

GUY. I schemed to get them into there. Do you think I'd go without a word with you? (Approaching her.)

RUTH (coldly, holding him at arm's length). We've parted once to-night. What do you want with me?

GUY. I want everything except to part again. You witch, what have you done to me? I haven't a nerve but tingles for the touch of you. I'm all burnt up. The night's a tossing fever, and the day's a cruel nightmare till evening comes and brings me sight of you.

RUTH (backing). Don't touch me, please.

GUY. How long am I to hold myself in leash? It's more than flesh and blood can stand. My God, I wonder if you know how beautiful you are.

RUTH. I have a mirror in my room.

GUY. I'm jealous of that mirror, Ruth. Jealous of a piece of glass because it sees you every day.

RUTH. You've seen me every evening for a month.

GUY. And I'm no farther than when we began. You're hot and cold by turn. You lead me on and thrust me off. You play with me. To-night you said you wouldn't walk with me to-morrow.

RUTH. And time I did. I've walked with you too much. A change of company is good.

GUY (startled). Company? What company?

RUTH (dryly). My mother's. You say you're where you were when we begun. Perhaps you are. But I am not. It's no new thing for you to go your walks with a weaver's lass. But it's new for me to be the lass. Do you think there are no wagging tongues about?

GUY. It's news to me that you give heed to gossip. You're not going to talk about your reputation, are you?

RUTH. No. I shan't talk about it, Guy.

GUY (scornfully). I thought you made of finer stuff.

RUTH. Than those others you have walked with?

GUY (sharply). What's that to do with you?

RUTH. Nothing, but that I find it good to know about them.

GUY. This is strange talk for a woman.

RUTH (dryly). Folk always say I should have been a man.

GUY (ardently). Thank God, you're not. It's better to rule a man than be one, Ruth.

RUTH. Do I rule you?

GUY. You've made a slave of me. I'm at your feet.

RUTH. You told the others that.

GUY. Had they your beauty?

RUTH. Then I've the greater cause to guard it.

GUY. You haven't talked like this outside.

RUTH. I'm inside now. This is my father's cottage.

GUY. You've been like this to-night. Perverse. As if you didn't know what passion meant. As if you laughed at me for being on fire for you. You've come half-way to meet me till to-night. You've answered love with love. You've been a fine free glory of a woman that it was heaven to be near and hell to be away from, that knew to be in love was to be upraised above the talk of fools and what a pair of lovers do is right because they do it for their love.

RUTH (absently). Yes. What lovers do is right even if it's to renounce.

GUY. Renounce? What are you talking about?

RUTH. I was thinking of a pair of lovers that I know.

GUY (roughly). Then stop thinking of them. Think of us.

RUTH. I'm thinking of myself.

GUY. You're in a curious mood to-night.

RUTH. To-night I'm being prudent.

GUY (scornfully). Prudent! Love isn't prudent. Prudence was made for cowards, not for lovers. Ruth, you're not a coward.

RUTH (absently). I think that what I'm doing now is the bravest thing I ever did. (At him.) What do you make of it all?

GUY (trying to be light). I think you're a mischievous tease, and——

RUTH. I'm quite in earnest. I was in earnest when I let you talk to me of love and still in earnest when I told you I could walk with you no more.

GUY. Ruth! You didn't mean it?

RUTH. I meant it all. Did you?

GUY (surprised). Did I?

RUTH. About your love.

GUY. Why should you doubt me, Ruth?

RUTH. I'll tell you. Because in all your talk of love, you have used a lot of words, but there is one word that you haven't spoken yet, and that I'd like to hear before I go my walks with you again.

GUY. What word?

RUTH. Marriage.

GUY (staggered, then recovering). Marriage! Well, isn't it early days for that?

RUTH. With some men and some women it would be over early. When you're the man and I the woman, it isn't early.

GUY. Marriage! There's a directness about you.

RUTH (simply). Yes, there is.

GUY. I'm taken by surprise, but——

RUTH (quietly). Are you?

GUY. I've been too busy simply loving you to think of marriage. (Quickly.) Yes, Ruth, of course we're going to be married. It would be monstrous in me ever to have intended anything else. But—er—you know, there's my father. We shall have to keep the marriage secret. Just the clergyman and no witnesses to make quite sure of secrecy.

RUTH (moving to door as if leaving him and opening it). Good-bye, Mr. Barlow.

GUY (staring at her). Ruth!

RUTH. Good-bye. Yes. Look at me well. It's your last look at close quarters.

GUY (by her). No, by Heaven, it's not.

RUTH (still holding the door open). You've told me much about my beauty. You hold my beauty cheap.

GUY. Your beauty is the richest, finest thing in all the world.

RUTH. A secret marriage!

GUY. What's changed you, Ruth? You've shown yourself to me a soft and yielding woman. To-night, you're hard, suspicious.

RUTH (closing door). To-night, I mean to strike a bargain with you.

GUY. Lovers don't talk of bargains.

RUTH. There's always time to talk of love. To-night, we'll talk of marriage, if you please.

GUY. You mean to be wilful.

RUTH. I mean that if you want me there's a price to pay, and a secret marriage by a puppet priest with no witnesses is too low a price for me.

GUY (blustering). You thought that!

RUTH (calmly). Wasn't I right? How badly do you want me, Mr. Guy Barlow? You see me, and you know the price.

GUY (quite shocked). You didn't talk this way outside. You've made it all so ugly. You've taken all romance away.

RUTH. Romance is safe for men. It's dangerous for women. You tell me I was soft and yielding. What if I'd been too soft, and yielded further than I should? You'd still have life, and life would still be beautiful for you and you'd be looking for another woman with a pretty face to make love beautifully with you. But I'd be dead. I should have killed myself and you'd forget me in a little while.

GUY (genuinely moved). Ruth, stop! I'm not a black-guard.

RUTH. I'm hoping not, if I'm to be your wife.

GUY. I never meant you harm. I simply didn't think.

RUTH. You thought fast enough of a secret marriage. You remembered to be prudent, and prudence, as I think you said, is made for cowards, not for lovers. Are you a coward, Mr. Guy?

GUY. I'm a lover, Ruth. Will you be my wife?

RUTH (with slight shudder). Yes.

GUY (holding her). I've got you now.

RUTH. Yes. For better or for worse, you've got me now.

GUY. For better than the best. I never knew till I met you what love could do to a man. Ruth, you won't remember what you fancied that I thought to-night? You won't have that against me? It really wasn't so.

RUTH. I have only room for one thought now. I remember that you're going to marry me.

GUY (lightly). In a precious few days, you'll remember that I have married you. I'm not cut out for waiting.

RUTH. I shall not keep you waiting.

(Enter Ephraim and Matthew.)

EPHRAIM. Well, that's settled now, Matt.

MATTHEW (like a beaten man). Yes, it's settled. I'll be at factory come five to-morrow morning.

GUY. That's good.

MATTHEW. Is it? I'll tell you this much, Mr. Barlow, it's a bad night's work you've done.

GUY. If you're talking to me, it's the best night's work I've ever done.

MATTHEW (morosely). I was talking to your father.

EPHRAIM. Well, well, we must agree to differ.

MATTHEW. And it won't be the last of our differences, neither. It's my punishment, this is. I've been a proud man and I'm humbled. Some weaver lads come here this very night asking me to join in with them.

EPHRAIM. Join? In what?

MATTHEW. Ah, well, I'll leave you to guess in what. I sent them off with a good big flea in their ear: told them a hand-loom weaver had nowt to do with their sort. I've everything to do with their sort now. I'm one of them, and if they have owt to say, or do against you and your ways, I'll say and do it with them. You've made a Radical to-night.

EPHRAIM. Now, Matt, don't try to threaten me. We've met as friends too often in the days gone by for that.

MATTHEW. Yes, before you started getting up in the world by climbing on other men's shoulders.

EPHRAIM. And if you'll let me, we'll go on being friends.

RUTH. Of course you will. Now more than ever.

MATTHEW (roughly). You don't know what you're talking about, lass.

RUTH. Tell them, Guy.

EPHRAIM. Guy?

GUY. Mr. Butterworth, you and my father must be friends, because I'm going to marry Ruth.

MATTHEW. What's that?

RUTH. Yes, father, it's true.

MATTHEW (excitedly calling and opening door). Here, Mary! Mary, where are you?

(Enter Mary.)

Here's our Ruth going to wed the young master. What do you say to that?

MARY (judicially). I say the young master's doing well for himself.

EPHRAIM (sourly). Nobody asks what I think.

GUY. That'll be all right, father.

EPHRAIM. Will it?

GUY. Oh, I'll tell you about it walking home. You've Mr. Butterworth's hand to shake.

EPHRAIM (dryly). It just depends if he's still a Radical.

MATTHEW. Me? I'm a maze. I don't know what I am.

EPHRAIM (genially smiling). I'll chance it then. (They shake.) Good night, Matt. (Genially.) Good night.

GUY. To-morrow, Ruth.

RUTH. Yes, Guy, to-morrow.

(Exeunt Ephraim and Guy.)

MARY (going to Ruth as if to kiss her). Well, lass, you said you'd surprise us. You have and all. Biggest surprise I ever had. Wedding the young master. Something like a match now this is.

RUTH. Don't, mother. I'm so ashamed.

MARY. Ashamed? Where's the shame in getting wed? We all come to it.

MATTHEW. And you've come to it rare and well. And me thinking in yonder while Mr. Barlow talked to me I'd have small cause now to send young Kelsall off, for I'm a factory hand myself the same as he.

RUTH. Poor Martin Kelsall.

MATTHEW. Aye, poor he is and rich you're going to be. You've little need to think of Kelsall now.

RUTH. No. I mustn't think of Martin now. I'm doing what I meant to do. I've got Guy Barlow.

MARY. Ruth, there'll be a lot of sewing to be done.

RUTH. Why?

MARY. Why? The girl's a-dream. Against your wedding to be sure. What else are you thinking of?

RUTH. It's not my wedding that I'm thinking of. It's afterwards. Well, I've begun. I'm going to see it through.

(Ruth stares straight out, as into the future. The others are looking at her.)

CURTAIN.