TARLETON. Which father?
BENTLEY. The first one: the regulation natural chap. He kept a tame
philosopher in the house: a sort of Coleridge or Herbert Spencer kind
of card, you know. That was the second father. Then his mother was
an Italian princess; and she had an Italian priest always about. He
was supposed to take charge of her conscience; but from what I could
make out, she jolly well took charge of his. The whole three of them
took charge of Joey's conscience. He used to hear them arguing like
mad about everything. You see, the philosopher was a freethinker, and
always believed the latest thing. The priest didnt believe anything,
because it was sure to get him into trouble with someone or another.
And the natural father kept an open mind and believed whatever paid
him best. Between the lot of them Joey got cultivated no end. He
said if he could only have had three mothers as well, he'd have backed
himself against Napoleon.
TARLETON. _[impressed]_ Thats an idea. Thats a most interesting
idea: a most important idea.
MRS TARLETON. You always were one for ideas, John.
TARLETON. Youre right, Chickabiddy. What do I tell Johnny when he
brags about Tarleton's Underwear? It's not the underwear. The
underwear be hanged! Anybody can make underwear. Anybody can sell
underwear. Tarleton's Ideas: thats whats done it. Ive often thought
of putting that up over the shop.
BENTLEY. Take me into partnership when you do, old man. I'm wasted
on the underwear; but I shall come in strong on the ideas.
TARLETON. You be a good boy; and perhaps I will.
MRS TARLETON. _[scenting a plot against her beloved Johnny]_ Now,
John: you promised--
TARLETON. Yes, yes. All right, Chickabiddy: dont fuss. Your
precious Johnny shant be interfered with. _[Bouncing up, too
energetic to sit still]_ But I'm getting sick of that old shop.
Thirty-five years Ive had of it: same blessed old stairs to go up and
down every day: same old lot: same old game: sorry I ever started
it now. I'll chuck it and try something else: something that will
give a scope to all my faculties.
HYPATIA. Theres money in underwear: theres none in wild-cat ideas.
TARLETON. Theres money in me, madam, no matter what I go into.
MRS TARLETON. Dont boast, John. Dont tempt Providence.
TARLETON. Rats! You dont understand Providence. Providence likes to
be tempted. Thats the secret of the successful man. Read Browning.
Natural theology on an island, eh? Caliban was afraid to tempt
Providence: that was why he was never able to get even with Prospero.
What did Prospero do? Prospero didnt even tempt Providence: he was
Providence. Thats one of Tarleton's ideas; and dont you forget it.
BENTLEY. You are full of beef today, old man.
TARLETON. Beef be blowed! Joy of life. Read Ibsen. _[He goes into
the pavilion to relieve his restlessness, and stares out with his
hands thrust deep in his pockets]._
HYPATIA. _[thoughtful]_ Bentley: couldnt you invite your friend Mr
Percival down here?
BENTLEY. Not if I know it. Youd throw me over the moment you set
eyes on him.
MRS TARLETON. Oh, Bunny! For shame!
BENTLEY. Well, who'd marry me, dyou suppose, if they could get my
brains with a full-sized body? No, thank you. I shall take jolly
good care to keep Joey out of this until Hypatia is past praying for.
_Johnny and Lord Summerhays return through the pavilion from their
stroll._
TARLETON. Welcome! welcome! Why have you stayed away so long?
LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[shaking hands]_ Yes: I should have come sooner.
But I'm still rather lost in England. _[Johnny takes his hat and
hangs it up beside his own]._ Thank you. _[Johnny returns to his
swing and his novel. Lord Summerhays comes to the writing table]._
The fact is that as Ive nothing to do, I never have time to go
anywhere. _[He sits down next Mrs Tarleton]._
TARLETON. _[following him and sitting down on his left]_ Paradox,
paradox. Good. Paradoxes are the only truths. Read Chesterton. But
theres lots for you to do here. You have a genius for government.
You learnt your job out there in Jinghiskahn. Well, we want to be
governed here in England. Govern us.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Ah yes, my friend; but in Jinghiskahn you have to
govern the right way. If you dont, you go under and come home. Here
everything has to be done the wrong way, to suit governors who
understand nothing but partridge shooting (our English native princes,
in fact) and voters who dont know what theyre voting about. I dont
understand these democratic games; and I'm afraid I'm too old to
learn. What can I do but sit in the window of my club, which consists
mostly of retired Indian Civil servants? We look on at the muddle and
the folly and amateurishness; and we ask each other where a single
fortnight of it would have landed us.
TARLETON. Very true. Still, Democracy's all right, you know. Read
Mill. Read Jefferson.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Yes. Democracy reads well; but it doesnt act well,
like some people's plays. No, no, my friend Tarleton: to make
Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make
Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy. Youve got
neither; and theres an end of it.
TARLETON. Still, you know, the superman may come. The superman's an
idea. I believe in ideas. Read Whatshisname.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Reading is a dangerous amusement, Tarleton. I wish
I could persuade your free library people of that.
TARLETON. Why, man, it's the beginning of education.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. On the contrary, it's the end of it. How can you
dare teach a man to read until youve taught him everything else first?
JOHNNY. _[intercepting his father's reply by coming out of the swing
and taking the floor]_ Leave it at that. Thats good sense. Anybody
on for a game of tennis?
BENTLEY. Oh, lets have some more improving conversation. Wouldnt you
rather, Johnny?
JOHNNY. If you ask me, no.
TARLETON. Johnny: you dont cultivate your mind. You dont read.
JOHNNY. _[coming between his mother and Lord Summerhays, book in
hand]_ Yes I do. I bet you what you like that, page for page, I read
more than you, though I dont talk about it so much. Only, I dont read
the same books. I like a book with a plot in it. You like a book
with nothing in it but some idea that the chap that writes it keeps
worrying, like a cat chasing its own tail. I can stand a little of
it, just as I can stand watching the cat for two minutes, say, when
Ive nothing better to do. But a man soon gets fed up with that sort
of thing. The fact is, you look on an author as a sort of god. _I_
look on him as a man that I pay to do a certain thing for me. I pay
him to amuse me and to take me out of myself and make me forget.
TARLETON. No. Wrong principle. You want to remember. Read Kipling.
"Lest we forget."
JOHNNY. If Kipling wants to remember, let him remember. If he had to
run Tarleton's Underwear, he'd be jolly glad to forget. As he has a
much softer job, and wants to keep himself before the public, his cry
is, "Dont you forget the sort of things I'm rather clever at writing
about." Well, I dont blame him: it's his business: I should do the
same in his place. But what he wants and what I want are two
different things. I want to forget; and I pay another man to make me
forget. If I buy a book or go to the theatre, I want to forget the
shop and forget myself from the moment I go in to the moment I come
out. Thats what I pay my money for. And if I find that the author's
simply getting at me the whole time, I consider that hes obtained my
money under false pretences. I'm not a morbid crank: I'm a natural
man; and, as such, I dont like being got at. If a man in my
employment did it, I should sack him. If a member of my club did it,
I should cut him. If he went too far with it, I should bring his
conduct before the committee. I might even punch his head, if it came
to that. Well, who and what is an author that he should be privileged
to take liberties that are not allowed to other men?
MRS TARLETON. You see, John! What have I always told you? Johnny
has as much to say for himself as anybody when he likes.
JOHNNY. I'm no fool, mother, whatever some people may fancy. I dont
set up to have as many ideas as the Governor; but what ideas I have
are consecutive, at all events. I can think as well as talk.
BENTLEY. _[to Tarleton, chuckling]_ Had you there, old man, hadnt
he? You are rather all over the shop with your ideas, aint you?
JOHNNY. _[handsomely]_ I'm not saying anything against you,
Governor. But I do say that the time has come for sane, healthy,
unpretending men like me to make a stand against this conspiracy of
the writing and talking and artistic lot to put us in the back row.
It isnt a fact that we're inferior to them: it's a put-up job; and
it's they that have put the job up. It's we that run the country for
them; and all the thanks we get is to be told we're Philistines and
vulgar tradesmen and sordid city men and so forth, and that theyre all
angels of light and leading. The time has come to assert ourselves
and put a stop to their stuck-up nonsense. Perhaps if we had nothing
better to do than talking or writing, we could do it better than they.
Anyhow, theyre the failures and refuse of business (hardly a man of
them that didnt begin in an office) and we're the successes of it.
Thank God I havnt failed yet at anything; and I dont believe I should
fail at literature if it would pay me to turn my hand to it.
BENTLEY. Hear, hear!
MRS TARLETON. Fancy you writing a book, Johnny! Do you think he
could, Lord Summerhays?
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Why not? As a matter of fact all the really
prosperous authors I have met since my return to England have been
very like him.
TARLETON. _[again impressed]_ Thats an idea. Thats a new idea. I
believe I ought to have made Johnny an author. Ive never said so
before for fear of hurting his feelings, because, after all, the lad
cant help it; but Ive never thought Johnny worth tuppence as a man of
business.
JOHNNY. _[sarcastic]_ Oh! You think youve always kept that to
yourself, do you, Governor? I know your opinion of me as well as you
know it yourself. It takes one man of business to appreciate another;
and you arnt, and you never have been, a real man of business. I know
where Tarleton's would have been three of four times if it hadnt been
for me. _[With a snort and a nod to emphasize the implied warning, he
retreats to the Turkish bath, and lolls against it with an air of
good-humoured indifference]._
TARLETON. Well, who denies it? Youre quite right, my boy. I don't
mind confessing to you all that the circumstances that condemned me to
keep a shop are the biggest tragedy in modern life. I ought to have
been a writer. I'm essentially a man of ideas. When I was a young
man I sometimes used to pray that I might fail, so that I should be
justified in giving up business and doing something: something
first-class. But it was no good: I couldnt fail. I said to myself
that if I could only once go to my Chickabiddy here and shew her a
chartered accountant's statement proving that I'd made 20 pounds less
than last year, I could ask her to let me chance Johnny's and
Hypatia's future by going into literature. But it was no good. First
it was 250 pounds more than last year. Then it was 700 pounds. Then
it was 2000 pounds. Then I saw it was no use: Prometheus was chained
to his rock: read Shelley: read Mrs Browning. Well, well, it was
not to be. _[He rises solemnly]._ Lord Summerhays: I ask you to
excuse me for a few moments. There are times when a man needs to
meditate in solitude on his destiny. A chord is touched; and he sees
the drama of his life as a spectator sees a play. Laugh if you feel
inclined: no man sees the comic side of it more than I. In the
theatre of life everyone may be amused except the actor.
_[Brightening]_ Theres an idea in this: an idea for a picture. What
a pity young Bentley is not a painter! Tarleton meditating on his
destiny. Not in a toga. Not in the trappings of the tragedian or the
philosopher. In plain coat and trousers: a man like any other man.
And beneath that coat and trousers a human soul. Tarleton's
Underwear! _[He goes out gravely into the vestibule]._
MRS TARLETON. _[fondly]_ I suppose it's a wife's partiality, Lord
Summerhays; but I do think John is really great. I'm sure he was
meant to be a king. My father looked down on John, because he was a
rate collector, and John kept a shop. It hurt his pride to have to
borrow money so often from John; and he used to console himself by
saying, "After all, he's only a linendraper." But at last one day he
said to me, "John is a king."
BENTLEY. How much did he borrow on that occasion?
LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[sharply]_ Bentley!
MRS TARLETON. Oh, dont scold the child: he'd have to say something
like that if it was to be his last word on earth. Besides, hes quite
right: my poor father had asked for his usual five pounds; and John
gave him a hundred in his big way. Just like a king.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Not at all. I had five kings to manage in
Jinghiskahn; and I think you do your husband some injustice, Mrs
Tarleton. They pretended to like me because I kept their brothers
from murdering them; but I didnt like them. And I like Tarleton.
MRS TARLETON. Everybody does. I really must go and make the cook do
him a Welsh rabbit. He expects one on special occasions. _[She goes
to the inner door]._ Johnny: when he comes back ask him where we're
to put that new Turkish bath. Turkish baths are his latest. _[She
goes out]._
JOHNNY. _[coming forward again]_ Now that the Governor has given
himself away, and the old lady's gone, I'll tell you something, Lord
Summerhays. If you study men whove made an enormous pile in business
without being keen on money, youll find that they all have a slate
off. The Governor's a wonderful man; but hes not quite all there, you
know. If you notice, hes different from me; and whatever my failings
may be, I'm a sane man. Erratic: thats what he is. And the danger
is that some day he'll give the whole show away.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Giving the show away is a method like any other
method. Keeping it to yourself is only another method. I should keep
an open mind about it.
JOHNNY. Has it ever occurred to you that a man with an open mind must
be a bit of a scoundrel? If you ask me, I like a man who makes up his
mind once for all as to whats right and whats wrong and then sticks to
it. At all events you know where to have him.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. That may not be his object.
BENTLEY. He may want to have you, old chap.
JOHNNY. Well, let him. If a member of my club wants to steal my
umbrella, he knows where to find it. If a man put up for the club who
had an open mind on the subject of property in umbrellas, I should
blackball him. An open mind is all very well in clever talky-talky;
but in conduct and in business give me solid ground.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Yes: the quicksands make life difficult. Still,
there they are. It's no use pretending theyre rocks.
JOHNNY. I dont know. You can draw a line and make other chaps toe
it. Thats what I call morality.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Very true. But you dont make any progress when
youre toeing a line.
HYPATIA. _[suddenly, as if she could bear no more of it]_ Bentley:
do go and play tennis with Johnny. You must take exercise.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Do, my boy, do. _[To Johnny]_ Take him out and
make him skip about.
BENTLEY. _[rising reluctantly]_ I promised you two inches more round
my chest this summer. I tried exercises with an indiarubber expander;
but I wasnt strong enough: instead of my expanding it, it crumpled me
up. Come along, Johnny.
JOHNNY. Do you no end of good, young chap. _[He goes out with
Bentley through the pavilion]._
_Hypatia throws aside her work with an enormous sigh of relief._
LORD SUMMERHAYS. At last!
HYPATIA. At last. Oh, if I might only have a holiday in an asylum
for the dumb. How I envy the animals! They cant talk. If Johnny
could only put back his ears or wag his tail instead of laying down
the law, how much better it would be! We should know when he was
cross and when he was pleased; and thats all we know now, with all his
talk. It never stops: talk, talk, talk, talk. Thats my life. All
the day I listen to mamma talking; at dinner I listen to papa talking;
and when papa stops for breath I listen to Johnny talking.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. You make me feel very guilty. I talk too, I'm
afraid.
HYPATIA. Oh, I dont mind that, because your talk is a novelty. But
it must have been dreadful for your daughters.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. I suppose so.
HYPATIA. If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
Three or four times in the last half hour Ive been on the point of
screaming.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Were we very dull?
HYPATIA. Not at all: you were very clever. Thats whats so hard to
bear, because it makes it so difficult to avoid listening. You see,
I'm young; and I do so want something to happen. My mother tells me
that when I'm her age, I shall be only too glad that nothing's
happened; but I'm not her age; so what good is that to me? Theres my
father in the garden, meditating on his destiny. All very well for
him: hes had a destiny to meditate on; but I havnt had any destiny
yet. Everything's happened to him: nothing's happened to me. Thats
why this unending talk is so maddeningly uninteresting to me.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. It would be worse if we sat in silence.
HYPATIA. No it wouldnt. If you all sat in silence, as if you were
waiting for something to happen, then there would be hope even if
nothing did happen. But this eternal cackle, cackle, cackle about
things in general is only fit for old, old, OLD people. I suppose it
means something to them: theyve had their fling. All I listen for is
some sign of it ending in something; but just when it seems to be
coming to a point, Johnny or papa just starts another hare; and it all
begins over again; and I realize that it's never going to lead
anywhere and never going to stop. Thats when I want to scream. I
wonder how you can stand it.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Well, I'm old and garrulous myself, you see.
Besides, I'm not here of my own free will, exactly. I came because
you ordered me to come.
HYPATIA. Didnt you want to come?
LORD SUMMERHAYS. My dear: after thirty years of managing other
people's business, men lose the habit of considering what they want or
dont want.
HYPATIA. Oh, dont begin to talk about what men do, and about thirty
years experience. If you cant get off that subject, youd better send
for Johnny and papa and begin it all over again.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. I'm sorry. I beg your pardon.
HYPATIA. I asked you, didnt you want to come?
LORD SUMMERHAYS. I did not stop to consider whether I wanted or not,
because when I read your letter I knew I had to come.
HYPATIA. Why?
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Oh come, Miss Tarleton! Really, really! Dont force
me to call you a blackmailer to your face. You have me in your power;
and I do what you tell me very obediently. Dont ask me to pretend I
do it of my own free will.
HYPATIA. I dont know what a blackmailer is. I havnt even that much
experience.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. A blackmailer, my dear young lady, is a person who
knows a disgraceful secret in the life of another person, and extorts
money from that other person by threatening to make his secret public
unless the money is paid.
HYPATIA. I havnt asked you for money.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. No; but you asked me to come down here and talk to
you; and you mentioned casually that if I didnt youd have nobody to
talk about me to but Bentley. That was a threat, was it not?
HYPATIA. Well, I wanted you to come.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. In spite of my age and my unfortunate talkativeness?
HYPATIA. I like talking to you. I can let myself go with you. I can
say things to you I cant say to other people.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. I wonder why?
HYPATIA. Well, you are the only really clever, grown-up, high-class,
experienced man I know who has given himself away to me by making an
utter fool of himself with me. You cant wrap yourself up in your toga
after that. You cant give yourself airs with me.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. You mean you can tell Bentley about me if I do.
HYPATIA. Even if there wasnt any Bentley: even if you didnt care
(and I really dont see why you should care so much) still, we never
could be on conventional terms with one another again. Besides, Ive
got a feeling for you: almost a ghastly sort of love for you.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[shrinking]_ I beg you--no, please.
HYPATIA. Oh, it's nothing at all flattering: and, of course, nothing
wrong, as I suppose youd call it.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Please believe that I know that. When men of my
age--
HYPATIA. _[impatiently]_ Oh, do talk about yourself when you mean
yourself, and not about men of your age.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. I'll put it as bluntly as I can. When, as you say,
I made an utter fool of myself, believe me, I made a poetic fool of
myself. I was seduced, not by appetites which, thank Heaven, Ive long
outlived: not even by the desire of second childhood for a child
companion, but by the innocent impulse to place the delicacy and
wisdom and spirituality of my age at the affectionate service of your
youth for a few years, at the end of which you would be a grown,
strong, formed--widow. Alas, my dear, the delicacy of age reckoned,
as usual, without the derision and cruelty of youth. You told me that
you didnt want to be an old man's nurse, and that you didnt want to
have undersized children like Bentley. It served me right: I dont
reproach you: I was an old fool. But how you can imagine, after
that, that I can suspect you of the smallest feeling for me except the
inevitable feeling of early youth for late age, or imagine that I have
any feeling for you except one of shrinking humiliation, I cant
understand.
HYPATIA. I dont blame you for falling in love with me. I shall be
grateful to you all my life for it, because that was the first time
that anything really interesting happened to me.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Do you mean to tell me that nothing of that kind had
ever happened before? that no man had ever--
HYPATIA. Oh, lots. Thats part of the routine of life here: the very
dullest part of it. The young man who comes a-courting is as familiar
an incident in my life as coffee for breakfast. Of course, hes too
much of a gentleman to misbehave himself; and I'm too much of a lady
to let him; and hes shy and sheepish; and I'm correct and
self-possessed; and at last, when I can bear it no longer, I either
frighten him off, or give him a chance of proposing, just to see how
he'll do it, and refuse him because he does it in the same silly way
as all the rest. You dont call that an event in one's life, do you?
With you it was different. I should as soon have expected the North
Pole to fall in love with me as you. You know I'm only a
linen-draper's daughter when all's said. I was afraid of you: you, a
great man! a lord! and older than my father. And then what a
situation it was! Just think of it! I was engaged to your son; and
you knew nothing about it. He was afraid to tell you: he brought you
down here because he thought if he could throw us together I could get
round you because I was such a ripping girl. We arranged it all: he
and I. We got Papa and Mamma and Johnny out of the way splendidly;
and then Bentley took himself off, and left us--you and me!--to take a
walk through the heather and admire the scenery of Hindhead. You
never dreamt that it was all a plan: that what made me so nice was
the way I was playing up to my destiny as the sweet girl that was to
make your boy happy. And then! and then! _[She rises to dance and
clap her hands in her glee]._
LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[shuddering]_ Stop, stop. Can no woman understand
a man's delicacy?
HYPATIA. _[revelling in the recollection]_ And then--ha, ha!--you
proposed. You! A father! For your son's girl!
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Stop, I tell you. Dont profane what you dont
understand.
HYPATIA. That was something happening at last with a vengeance. It
was splendid. It was my first peep behind the scenes. If I'd been
seventeen I should have fallen in love with you. Even as it is, I
feel quite differently towards you from what I do towards other old
men. So _[offering her hand]_ you may kiss my hand if that will be
any fun for you.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[rising and recoiling to the table, deeply
revolted]_ No, no, no. How dare you? _[She laughs mischievously]._
How callous youth is! How coarse! How cynical! How ruthlessly
cruel!
HYPATIA. Stuff! It's only that youre tired of a great many things
Ive never tried.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. It's not alone that. Ive not forgotten the
brutality of my own boyhood. But do try to learn, glorious young
beast that you are, that age is squeamish, sentimental, fastidious.
If you cant understand my holier feelings, at least you know the
bodily infirmities of the old. You know that I darent eat all the
rich things you gobble up at every meal; that I cant bear the noise
and racket and clatter that affect you no more than they affect a
stone. Well, my soul is like that too. Spare it: be gentle with it
_[he involuntarily puts out his hands to plead: she takes them with a
laugh]._ If you could possibly think of me as half an angel and half
an invalid, we should get on much better together.
HYPATIA. We get on very well, I think. Nobody else ever called me a
glorious young beast. I like that. Glorious young beast expresses
exactly what I like to be.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[extricating his hands and sitting down]_ Where on
earth did you get these morbid tastes? You seem to have been well
brought up in a normal, healthy, respectable, middle-class family.
Yet you go on like the most unwholesome product of the rankest
Bohemianism.