MASSEY. Remember your wife’s here and don’t talk as if you were sorry about it.
CHARLEY. [turning on them fiercely.] For heaven’s sake, can’t you listen fair? My wife needn’t go to her father for protection from me? I’m not a scoundrel just because I’ve got an idea, am I?
A pause—nobody answers.
But I’ll tell you what, marriage shouldn’t tie a man up as if he was a slave. I don’t want to desert Lily—she’s my wife and I’m proud of it—but because I married, am I never to strike out in anything? People like us are just cowards. We seize on the first soft job—and there we stick, like whipped dogs. We’re afraid to ask for anything, afraid to ask for a rise even—we wait till it comes. And when the boss says he won’t give you one—do we up and say, “Then I’ll go somewhere where I can get more.” Not a bit of it! What’s the good of sticking on here all our lives? Why shouldn’t somebody risk something sometimes? We’re all so jolly frightened—we’ve got no spunk—that’s where the others get the hold over us—we slog on day after day and when they cut our wages down we take it as meek as Moses. We’re not men, we’re machines. Next week I’ve got my choice—either to take less money to keep my job or to chuck it and try something else. You say—everybody says—keep the job. I expect I shall—I’m a coward like all of you—but what I want to know is, why can’t a man have a fit of restlessness and all that, without being thought a villain?
FOSTER. But after all, we undertake responsibilities when we marry, Mr. Wilson. We can’t overlook them.
CHARLEY. I don’t want to. But I don’t think we ought to talk as if when a man gets married he must always bring in just the same money.
FOSTER. If you have the misfortune to have your salary reduced, nobody would blame you.
CHARLEY. I don’t know. I felt a bit of a beast when I had to tell Lil about that.
MAGGIE. [suddenly.] If you went away, Lily could come and live with us.