Misalliance Part 7

LORD SUMMERHAYS. No.

HYPATIA. Shall I tell you why? Your ideal is an old woman. I daresay shes got a young face; but shes an old woman. Old, old, old.

Squeamish. Cant stand up to things. Cant enjoy things: not real things. Always on the shrink.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. On the shrink! Detestable expression.

HYPATIA. Bah! you cant stand even a little thing like that. What good are you? Oh, what good are you?

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Dont ask me. I dont know. I dont know.

_Tarleton returns from the vestibule. Hypatia sits down demurely._

HYPATIA. Well, papa: have you meditated on your destiny?

TARLETON. _[puzzled]_ What? Oh! my destiny. Gad, I forgot all about it: Jock started a rabbit and put it clean out of my head.

Besides, why should I give way to morbid introspection? It's a sign of madness. Read Lombroso. _[To Lord Summerhays]_ Well, Summerhays, has my little girl been entertaining you?

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Yes. She is a wonderful entertainer.

TARLETON. I think my idea of bringing up a young girl has been rather a success. Dont you listen to this, Patsy: it might make you conceited. Shes never been treated like a child. I always said the same thing to her mother. Let her read what she likes. Let her do what she likes. Let her go where she likes. Eh, Patsy?

HYPATIA. Oh yes, if there had only been anything for me to do, any place for me to go, anything I wanted to read.

TARLETON. There, you see! Shes not satisfied. Restless. Wants things to happen. Wants adventures to drop out of the sky.

HYPATIA. _[gathering up her work]_ If youre going to talk about me and my education, I'm off.

TARLETON. Well, well, off with you. _[To Lord Summerhays]_ Shes active, like me. She actually wanted me to put her into the shop.

HYPATIA. Well, they tell me that the girls there have adventures sometimes. _[She goes out through the inner door]_

TARLETON. She had me there, though she doesnt know it, poor innocent lamb! Public scandal exaggerates enormously, of course; but moralize as you will, superabundant vitality is a physical fact that cant be talked away. _[He sits down between the writing table and the sideboard]._ Difficult question this, of bringing up children.

Between ourselves, it has beaten me. I never was so surprised in my life as when I came to know Johnny as a man of business and found out what he was really like. How did you manage with your sons?

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Well, I really hadnt time to be a father: thats the plain truth of the matter. Their poor dear mother did the usual thing while they were with us. Then of course, Harrow, Cambridge, the usual routine of their cla.s.s. I saw very little of them, and thought very little about them: how could I? with a whole province on my hands.

They and I are--acquaintances. Not perhaps, quite ordinary acquaintances: theres a sort of--er--I should almost call it a sort of remorse about the way we shake hands (when we do shake hands) which means, I suppose, that we're sorry we dont care more for one another; and I'm afraid we dont meet oftener than we can help. We put each other too much out of countenance. It's really a very difficult relation. To my mind not altogether a natural one.

TARLETON. _[impressed, as usual]_ Thats an idea, certainly. I dont think anybody has ever written about that.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Bentley is the only one who was really my son in any serious sense. He was completely spoilt. When he was sent to a preparatory school he simply yelled until he was sent home. Harrow was out of the question; but we managed to tutor him into Cambridge.

No use: he was sent down. By that time my work was over; and I saw a good deal of him. But I could do nothing with him--except look on. I should have thought your case was quite different. You keep up the middle-cla.s.s tradition: the day school and the business training instead of the university. I believe in the day school part of it.

At all events, you know your own children.

TARLETON. Do you? I'm not so sure of it. Fact is, my dear Summerhays, once childhood is over, once the little animal has got past the stage at which it acquires what you might call a sense of decency, it's all up with the relation between parent and child. You cant get over the fearful shyness of it.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Shyness?

TARLETON. Yes, shyness. Read d.i.c.kens.

LORD SUMMERHAYS _[surprised]_ d.i.c.kens!! Of all authors, Charles d.i.c.kens! Are you serious?

TARLETON. I dont mean his books. Read his letters to his family.

Read any man's letters to his children. Theyre not human. Theyre not about himself or themselves. Theyre about hotels, scenery, about the weather, about getting wet and losing the train and what he saw on the road and all that. Not a word about himself. Forced. Shy. Duty letters. All fit to be published: that says everything. I tell you theres a wall ten feet thick and ten miles high between parent and child. I know what I'm talking about. Ive girls in my employment: girls and young men. I had ideas on the subject. I used to go to the parents and tell them not to let their children go out into the world without instruction in the dangers and temptations they were going to be thrown into. What did every one of the mothers say to me? "Oh, sir, how could I speak of such things to my own daughter?" The men said I was quite right; but they didnt do it, any more than I'd been able to do it myself to Johnny. I had to leave books in his way; and I felt just awful when I did it. Believe me, Summerhays, the relation between the young and the old should be an innocent relation. It should be something they could talk about. Well, the relation between parent and child may be an affectionate relation. It may be a useful relation. It may be a necessary relation. But it can never be an innocent relation. Youd die rather than allude to it. Depend on it, in a thousand years itll be considered bad form to know who your father and mother are. Embarra.s.sing. Better hand Bentley over to me.

I can look him in the face and talk to him as man to man. You can have Johnny.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Thank you. Ive lived so long in a country where a man may have fifty sons, who are no more to him than a regiment of soldiers, that I'm afraid Ive lost the English feeling about it.

TARLETON. _[restless again]_ You mean Jinghiskahn. Ah yes. Good thing the empire. Educates us. Opens our minds. Knocks the Bible out of us. And civilizes the other chaps.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Yes: it civilizes them. And it uncivilizes us.

Their gain. Our loss, Tarleton, believe me, our loss.

TARLETON. Well, why not? Averages out the human race. Makes the n.i.g.g.e.r half an Englishman. Makes the Englishman half a n.i.g.g.e.r.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Speaking as the unfortunate Englishman in question, I dont like the process. If I had my life to live over again, I'd stay at home and supercivilize myself.

TARLETON. Nonsense! dont be selfish. Think how youve improved the other chaps. Look at the Spanish empire! Bad job for Spain, but splendid for South America. Look at what the Romans did for Britain!

They burst up and had to clear out; but think of all they taught us!

They were the making of us: I believe there was a Roman camp on Hindhead: I'll shew it to you tomorrow. Thats the good side of Imperialism: it's unselfish. I despise the Little Englanders: theyre always thinking about England. Smallminded. I'm for the Parliament of man, the federation of the world. Read Tennyson. _[He settles down again]._ Then theres the great food question.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. _[apprehensively]_ Need we go into that this afternoon?

TARLETON. No; but I wish youd tell the Chickabiddy that the Jinghiskahns eat no end of toasted cheese, and that it's the secret of their amazing health and long life!

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Unfortunately they are neither healthy nor long lived. And they dont eat toasted cheese.

TARLETON. There you are! They would be if they ate it. Anyhow, say what you like, provided the moral is a Welsh rabbit for my supper.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. British morality in a nutsh.e.l.l!

TARLETON. _[hugely amused]_ Yes. Ha ha! Awful hypocrites, aint we?

_They are interrupted by excited cries from the grounds._

HYPATIA. Papa! Mamma! Come out as fast as you can.

Quick. Quick.

BENTLEY. h.e.l.lo, governor! Come out. An aeroplane.

Look, look.

TARLETON. _[starting up]_ Aeroplane! Did he say an aeroplane?

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Aeroplane! _[A shadow falls on the pavilion; and some of the gla.s.s at the top is shattered and falls on the floor]._

_Tarleton and Lord Summerhays rush out through the pavilion into the garden._

HYPATIA. Take care. Take care of the chimney.

BENTLEY. Come this side: it's coming right where youre standing.

TARLETON. Hallo! where the devil are you coming? youll have my roof off.

LORD SUMMERHAYS He's lost control.