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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Man and Superman, by Bernard Shaw
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+Title: MAN AND SUPERMAN
+
+Author:	GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
+
+Release Date: July, 2002  [Etext #3328]
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+[The actual date this file first posted = 04/02/01]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Man and Superman, by Bernard Shaw
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+
+MAN AND SUPERMAN
+A COMEDY AND A PHILOSOPHY
+
+By Bernard Shaw
+
+
+
+
+EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO ARTHUR BINGHAM WALKLEY
+
+My dear Walkley:
+
+You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity
+with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably
+by this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning
+has arrived: here is your play! I say your play, because qui
+facit per alium facit per se. Its profits, like its labor, belong
+to me: its morals, its manners, its philosophy, its influence on
+the young, are for you to justify. You were of mature age when
+you made the suggestion; and you knew your man. It is hardly
+fifteen years since, as twin pioneers of the New Journalism of
+that time, we two, cradled in the same new sheets, made an epoch
+in the criticism of the theatre and the opera house by making it
+a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life. So you
+cannot plead ignorance of the character of the force you set in
+motion. Yon meant me to epater le bourgeois; and if he protests,
+I hereby refer him to you as the accountable party.
+
+I warn you that if you attempt to repudiate your responsibility,
+I shall suspect you of finding the play too decorous for your
+taste. The fifteen years have made me older and graver. In you I
+can detect no such becoming change. Your levities and audacities
+are like the loves and comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they
+increase, even as your days do grow. No mere pioneering journal
+dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone
+sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even
+the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not
+produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is
+compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness
+to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into
+naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do
+not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign
+with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines. I am not
+sure that this is not a portent of Revolution. In eighteenth
+century France the end was at hand when men bought the
+Encyclopedia and found Diderot there. When I buy the Times and
+find you there, my prophetic ear catches a rattle of twentieth
+century tumbrils.
+
+However, that is not my present anxiety. The question is, will
+you not be disappointed with a Don Juan play in which not one of
+that hero's mille e tre adventures is brought upon the stage? To
+propitiate you, let me explain myself. You will retort that I
+never do anything else: it is your favorite jibe at me that what
+I call drama is nothing but explanation. But you must not expect
+me to adopt your inexplicable, fantastic, petulant, fastidious
+ways: you must take me as I am, a reasonable, patient,
+consistent, apologetic, laborious person, with the temperament of
+a schoolmaster and the pursuits of a vestryman. No doubt that
+literary knack of mine which happens to amuse the British public
+distracts attention from my character; but the character is there
+none the less, solid as bricks. I have a conscience; and
+conscience is always anxiously explanatory. You, on the contrary,
+feel that a man who discusses his conscience is much like a woman
+who discusses her modesty. The only moral force you condescend to
+parade is the force of your wit: the only demand you make in
+public is the demand of your artistic temperament for symmetry,
+elegance, style, grace, refinement, and the cleanliness which
+comes next to godliness if not before it. But my conscience is
+the genuine pulpit article: it annoys me to see people
+comfortable when they ought to be uncomfortable; and I insist on
+making them think in order to bring them to conviction of sin. If
+you don't like my preaching you must lump it. I really cannot
+help it.
+
+In the preface to my Plays for Puritans I explained the
+predicament of our contemporary English drama, forced to deal
+almost exclusively with cases of sexual attraction, and yet
+forbidden to exhibit the incidents of that attraction or even to
+discuss its nature. Your suggestion that I should write a Don
+Juan play was virtually a challenge to me to treat this subject
+myself dramatically. The challenge was difficult enough to be
+worth accepting, because, when you come to think of it, though we
+have plenty of dramas with heroes and heroines who are in love
+and must accordingly marry or perish at the end of the play, or
+about people whose relations with one another have been
+complicated by the marriage laws, not to mention the looser sort
+of plays which trade on the tradition that illicit love affairs
+are at once vicious and delightful, we have no modern English
+plays in which the natural attraction of the sexes for one
+another is made the mainspring of the action. That is why we
+insist on beauty in our performers, differing herein from the
+countries our friend William Archer holds up as examples of
+seriousness to our childish theatres. There the Juliets and
+Isoldes, the Romeos and Tristans, might be our mothers and
+fathers. Not so the English actress. The heroine she impersonates
+is not allowed to discuss the elemental relations of men and
+women: all her romantic twaddle about novelet-made love, all her
+purely legal dilemmas as to whether she was married or
+"betrayed," quite miss our hearts and worry our minds. To console
+ourselves we must just look at her. We do so; and her beauty
+feeds our starving emotions. Sometimes we grumble ungallantly at
+the lady because she does not act as well as she looks. But in a
+drama which, with all its preoccupation with sex, is really void
+of sexual interest, good looks are more desired than histrionic
+skill.
+
+Let me press this point on you, since you are too clever to raise
+the fool's cry of paradox whenever I take hold of a stick by the
+right instead of the wrong end. Why are our occasional attempts
+to deal with the sex problem on the stage so repulsive and dreary
+that even those who are most determined that sex questions shall
+be held open and their discussion kept free, cannot pretend to
+relish these joyless attempts at social sanitation? Is it not
+because at bottom they are utterly sexless? What is the usual
+formula for such plays? A woman has, on some past occasion, been
+brought into conflict with the law which regulates the relations
+of the sexes. A man, by falling in love with her, or marrying
+her, is brought into conflict with the social convention which
+discountenances the woman. Now the conflicts of individuals with
+law and convention can be dramatized like all other human
+conflicts; but they are purely judicial; and the fact that we are
+much more curious about the suppressed relations between the man
+and the woman than about the relations between both and our
+courts of law and private juries of matrons, produces that
+sensation of evasion, of dissatisfaction, of fundamental
+irrelevance, of shallowness, of useless disagreeableness, of
+total failure to edify and partial failure to interest, which is
+as familiar to you in the theatres as it was to me when I, too,
+frequented those uncomfortable buildings, and found our popular
+playwrights in the mind to (as they thought) emulate Ibsen.
+
+I take it that when you asked me for a Don Juan play you did not
+want that sort of thing. Nobody does: the successes such plays
+sometimes obtain are due to the incidental conventional melodrama
+with which the experienced popular author instinctively saves
+himself from failure. But what did you want? Owing to your
+unfortunate habit--you now, I hope, feel its inconvenience--of
+not explaining yourself, I have had to discover this for myself.
+First, then, I have had to ask myself, what is a Don Juan?
+Vulgarly, a libertine. But your dislike of vulgarity is pushed to
+the length of a defect (universality of character is impossible
+without a share of vulgarity); and even if you could acquire the
+taste, you would find yourself overfed from ordinary sources
+without troubling me. So I took it that you demanded a Don Juan
+in the philosophic sense.
+
+Philosophically, Don Juan is a man who, though gifted enough to
+be exceptionally capable of distinguishing between good and evil,
+follows his own instincts without regard to the common statute,
+or canon law; and therefore, whilst gaining the ardent sympathy
+of our rebellious instincts (which are flattered by the
+brilliancies with which Don Juan associates them) finds himself
+in mortal conflict with existing institutions, and defends
+himself by fraud and farce as unscrupulously as a farmer defends
+his crops by the same means against vermin. The prototypic Don
+Juan, invented early in the XVI century by a Spanish monk, was
+presented, according to the ideas of that time, as the enemy of
+God, the approach of whose vengeance is felt throughout the
+drama, growing in menace from minute to minute. No anxiety is
+caused on Don Juan's account by any minor antagonist: he easily
+eludes the police, temporal and spiritual; and when an indignant
+father seeks private redress with the sword, Don Juan kills him
+without an effort. Not until the slain father returns from heaven
+as the agent of God, in the form of his own statue, does he
+prevail against his slayer and cast him into hell. The moral is a
+monkish one: repent and reform now; for to-morrow it may be too
+late. This is really the only point on which Don Juan is
+sceptical; for he is a devout believer in an ultimate hell, and
+risks damnation only because, as he is young, it seems so far off
+that repentance can be postponed until he has amused himself to
+his heart's content.
+
+But the lesson intended by an author is hardly ever the lesson
+the world chooses to learn from his book. What attracts and
+impresses us in El Burlador de Sevilla is not the immediate
+urgency of repentance, but the heroism of daring to be the enemy
+of God. From Prometheus to my own Devil's Disciple, such enemies
+have always been popular. Don Juan became such a pet that the
+world could not bear his damnation. It reconciled him
+sentimentally to God in a second version, and clamored for his
+canonization for a whole century, thus treating him as English
+journalism has treated that comic foe of the gods, Punch.
+Moliere's Don Juan casts back to the original in point of
+impenitence; but in piety he falls off greatly. True, he also
+proposes to repent; but in what terms? "Oui, ma foi! il faut
+s'amender. Encore vingt ou trente ans de cette vie-ci, et puis
+nous songerons a nous." After Moliere comes the artist-enchanter,
+the master of masters, Mozart, who reveals the hero's spirit in
+magical harmonies, elfin tones, and elate darting rhythms as of
+summer lightning made audible. Here you have freedom in love and
+in morality mocking exquisitely at slavery to them, and
+interesting you, attracting you, tempting you, inexplicably
+forcing you to range the hero with his enemy the statue on a
+transcendant plane, leaving the prudish daughter and her priggish
+lover on a crockery shelf below to live piously ever after.
+
+After these completed works Byron's fragment does not count for
+much philosophically. Our vagabond libertines are no more
+interesting from that point of view than the sailor who has a
+wife in every port, and Byron's hero is, after all, only a
+vagabond libertine. And he is dumb: he does not discuss himself
+with a Sganarelle-Leporello or with the fathers or brothers of
+his mistresses: he does not even, like Casanova, tell his own
+story. In fact he is not a true Don Juan at all; for he is no
+more an enemy of God than any romantic and adventurous young
+sower of wild oats. Had you and I been in his place at his age,
+who knows whether we might not have done as he did, unless
+indeed your fastidiousness had saved you from the empress
+Catherine. Byron was as little of a philosopher as Peter the
+Great: both were instances of that rare and useful, but
+unedifying variation, an energetic genius born without the
+prejudices or superstitions of his contemporaries. The resultant
+unscrupulous freedom of thought made Byron a greater poet than
+Wordsworth just as it made Peter a greater king than George III;
+but as it was, after all, only a negative qualification, it did
+not prevent Peter from being an appalling blackguard and an
+arrant poltroon, nor did it enable Byron to become a religious
+force like Shelley. Let us, then, leave Byron's Don Juan out of
+account. Mozart's is the last of the true Don Juans; for by the
+time he was of age, his cousin Faust had, in the hands of Goethe,
+taken his place and carried both his warfare and his
+reconciliation with the gods far beyond mere lovemaking into
+politics, high art, schemes for reclaiming new continents from
+the ocean, and recognition of an eternal womanly principle in the
+universe. Goethe's Faust and Mozart's Don Juan were the last
+words of the XVIII century on the subject; and by the time the
+polite critics of the XIX century, ignoring William Blake as
+superficially as the XVIII had ignored Hogarth or the XVII
+Bunyan, had got past the Dickens-Macaulay Dumas-Guizot stage and
+the Stendhal-Meredith-Turgenieff stage, and were confronted with
+philosophic fiction by such pens as Ibsen's and Tolstoy's, Don
+Juan had changed his sex and become Dona Juana, breaking out of
+the Doll's House and asserting herself as an individual instead
+of a mere item in a moral pageant.
+
+Now it is all very well for you at the beginning of the XX
+century to ask me for a Don Juan play; but you will see from the
+foregoing survey that Don Juan is a full century out of date for
+you and for me; and if there are millions of less literate people
+who are still in the eighteenth century, have they not Moliere
+and Mozart, upon whose art no human hand can improve? You would
+laugh at me if at this time of day I dealt in duels and ghosts
+and "womanly" women. As to mere libertinism, you would be the
+first to remind me that the Festin de Pierre of Moliere is not a
+play for amorists, and that one bar of the voluptuous
+sentimentality of Gounod or Bizet would appear as a licentious
+stain on the score of Don Giovanni. Even the more abstract parts
+of the Don Juan play are dilapidated past use: for instance, Don
+Juan's supernatural antagonist hurled those who refuse to repent
+into lakes of burning brimstone, there to be tormented by devils
+with horns and tails. Of that antagonist, and of that conception
+of repentance, how much is left that could be used in a play by
+me dedicated to you? On the other hand, those forces of middle
+class public opinion which hardly existed for a Spanish nobleman
+in the days of the first Don Juan, are now triumphant everywhere.
+Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now
+shock his greengrocer. The women, "marchesane, principesse,
+cameriere, cittadine" and all, are become equally dangerous: the
+sex is aggressive, powerful: when women are wronged they do not
+group themselves pathetically to sing "Protegga il giusto
+cielo": they grasp formidable legal and social weapons, and
+retaliate. Political parties are wrecked and public careers
+undone by a single indiscretion. A man had better have all the
+statues in London to supper with him, ugly as they are, than be
+brought to the bar of the Nonconformist Conscience by Donna
+Elvira. Excommunication has become almost as serious a business
+as it was in the X century.
+
+As a result, Man is no longer, like Don Juan, victor in the duel
+of sex. Whether he has ever really been may be doubted: at all
+events the enormous superiority of Woman's natural position in
+this matter is telling with greater and greater force. As to
+pulling the Nonconformist Conscience by the beard as Don Juan
+plucked the beard of the Commandant's statue in the convent of
+San Francisco, that is out of the question nowadays: prudence and
+good manners alike forbid it to a hero with any mind. Besides, it
+is Don Juan's own beard that is in danger of plucking. Far from
+relapsing into hypocrisy, as Sganarelle feared, he has
+unexpectedly discovered a moral in his immorality. The growing
+recognition of his new point of view is heaping responsibility on
+him. His former jests he has had to take as seriously as I have
+had to take some of the jests of Mr W. S. Gilbert. His
+scepticism, once his least tolerated quality, has now triumphed
+so completely that he can no longer assert himself by witty
+negations, and must, to save himself from cipherdom, find an
+affirmative position. His thousand and three affairs of
+gallantry, after becoming, at most, two immature intrigues
+leading to sordid and prolonged complications and humiliations,
+have been discarded altogether as unworthy of his philosophic
+dignity and compromising to his newly acknowledged position as
+the founder of a school. Instead of pretending to read Ovid he
+does actually read Schopenhaur and Nietzsche, studies
+Westermarck, and is concerned for the future of the race instead
+of for the freedom of his own instincts. Thus his profligacy and
+his dare-devil airs have gone the way of his sword and mandoline
+into the rag shop of anachronisms and superstitions. In fact, he
+is now more Hamlet than Don Juan; for though the lines put into
+the actor's mouth to indicate to the pit that Hamlet is a
+philosopher are for the most part mere harmonious platitude
+which, with a little debasement of the word-music, would be
+properer to Pecksniff, yet if you separate the real hero,
+inarticulate and unintelligible to himself except in flashes of
+inspiration, from the performer who has to talk at any cost
+through five acts; and if you also do what you must always do in
+Shakespear's tragedies: that is, dissect out the absurd
+sensational incidents and physical violences of the borrowed
+story from the genuine Shakespearian tissue, you will get a true
+Promethean foe of the gods, whose instinctive attitude towards
+women much resembles that to which Don Juan is now driven. From
+this point of view Hamlet was a developed Don Juan whom
+Shakespear palmed off as a reputable man just as he palmed poor
+Macbeth off as a murderer. To-day the palming off is no longer
+necessary (at least on your plane and mine) because Don Juanism
+is no longer misunderstood as mere Casanovism. Don Juan himself
+is almost ascetic in his desire to avoid that misunderstanding;
+and so my attempt to bring him up to date by launching him as a
+modern Englishman into a modern English environment has produced
+a figure superficially quite unlike the hero of Mozart.
+
+And yet I have not the heart to disappoint you wholly of another
+glimpse of the Mozartian dissoluto punito and his antagonist the
+statue. I feel sure you would like to know more of that statue--
+to draw him out when he is off duty, so to speak. To gratify you,
+I have resorted to the trick of the strolling theatrical manager
+who advertizes the pantomime of Sinbad the Sailor with a stock of
+second-hand picture posters designed for Ali Baba. He simply
+thrusts a few oil jars into the valley of diamonds, and so
+fulfils the promise held out by the hoardings to the public eye.
+I have adapted this simple device to our occasion by thrusting
+into my perfectly modern three-act play a totally extraneous act
+in which my hero, enchanted by the air of the Sierra, has a dream
+in which his Mozartian ancestor appears and philosophizes at
+great length in a Shavio-Socratic dialogue with the lady, the
+statue, and the devil.
+
+But this pleasantry is not the essence of the play. Over this
+essence I have no control. You propound a certain social
+substance, sexual attraction to wit, for dramatic distillation;
+and I distil it for you. I do not adulterate the product with
+aphrodisiacs nor dilute it with romance and water; for I am
+merely executing your commission, not producing a popular play
+for the market. You must therefore (unless, like most wise men,
+you read the play first and the preface afterwards) prepare
+yourself to face a trumpery story of modern London life, a life
+in which, as you know, the ordinary man's main business is to get
+means to keep up the position and habits of a gentleman, and the
+ordinary woman's business is to get married. In 9,999 cases out
+of 10,000, you can count on their doing nothing, whether noble
+or base, that conflicts with these ends; and that assurance is
+what you rely on as their religion, their morality, their
+principles, their patriotism, their reputation, their honor and
+so forth.
+
+On the whole, this is a sensible and satisfactory foundation for
+society. Money means nourishment and marriage means children; and
+that men should put nourishment first and women children first
+is, broadly speaking, the law of Nature and not the dictate of
+personal ambition. The secret of the prosaic man's success, such
+as it is, is the simplicity with which he pursues these ends: the
+secret of the artistic man's failure, such as that is, is the
+versatility with which he strays in all directions after
+secondary ideals. The artist is either a poet or a scallawag: as
+poet, he cannot see, as the prosaic man does, that chivalry is at
+bottom only romantic suicide: as scallawag, he cannot see that it
+does not pay to spunge and beg and lie and brag and neglect his
+person. Therefore do not misunderstand my plain statement of the
+fundamental constitution of London society as an Irishman's
+reproach to your nation. From the day I first set foot on this
+foreign soil I knew the value of the prosaic qualities of which
+Irishmen teach Englishmen to be ashamed as well as I knew the
+vanity of the poetic qualities of which Englishmen teach Irishmen
+to be proud. For the Irishman instinctively disparages the
+quality which makes the Englishman dangerous to him; and the
+Englishman instinctively flatters the fault that makes the
+Irishman harmless and amusing to him. What is wrong with the
+prosaic Englishman is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all
+countries: stupidity. The vitality which places nourishment and
+children first, heaven and hell a somewhat remote second, and the
+health of society as an organic whole nowhere, may muddle
+successfully through the comparatively tribal stages of
+gregariousness; but in nineteenth century nations and twentieth
+century empires the determination of every man to be rich at all
+costs, and of every woman to be married at all costs, must,
+without a highly scientific social organization, produce a
+ruinous development of poverty, celibacy, prostitution, infant
+mortality, adult degeneracy, and everything that wise men most
+dread. In short, there is no future for men, however brimming
+with crude vitality, who are neither intelligent nor politically
+educated enough to be Socialists. So do not misunderstand me in
+the other direction either: if I appreciate the vital qualities
+of the Englishman as I appreciate the vital qualities of the bee,
+I do not guarantee the Englishman against being, like the bee (or
+the Canaanite) smoked out and unloaded of his honey by beings
+inferior to himself in simple acquisitiveness, combativeness, and
+fecundity, but superior to him in imagination and cunning.
+
+The Don Juan play, however, is to deal with sexual attraction,
+and not with nutrition, and to deal with it in a society in which
+the serious business of sex is left by men to women, as the
+serious business of nutrition is left by women to men. That the
+men, to protect themselves against a too aggressive prosecution
+of the women's business, have set up a feeble romantic convention
+that the initiative in sex business must always come from the
+man, is true; but the pretence is so shallow that even in the
+theatre, that last sanctuary of unreality, it imposes only on the
+inexperienced. In Shakespear's plays the woman always takes the
+initiative. In his problem plays and his popular plays alike the
+love interest is the interest of seeing the woman hunt the man
+down. She may do it by blandishment, like Rosalind, or by
+stratagem, like Mariana; but in every case the relation between
+the woman and the man is the same: she is the pursuer and
+contriver, he the pursued and disposed of.  When she is baffled,
+like Ophelia, she goes mad and commits suicide; and the man goes
+straight from her funeral to a fencing match. No doubt Nature,
+with very young creatures, may save the woman the trouble of
+scheming: Prospero knows that he has only to throw Ferdinand and
+Miranda together and they will mate like a pair of doves; and
+there is no need for Perdita to capture Florizel as the lady
+doctor in All's Well That Ends Well (an early Ibsenite heroine)
+captures Bertram. But the mature cases all illustrate the
+Shakespearian law. The one apparent exception, Petruchio, is not
+a real one: he is most carefully characterized as a purely
+commercial matrimonial adventurer. Once he is assured that
+Katharine has money, he undertakes to marry her before he has
+seen her. In real life we find not only Petruchios, but
+Mantalinis and Dobbins who pursue women with appeals to their
+pity or jealousy or vanity, or cling to them in a romantically
+infatuated way. Such effeminates do not count in the world
+scheme: even Bunsby dropping like a fascinated bird into the jaws
+of Mrs MacStinger is by comparison a true tragic object of pity
+and terror. I find in my own plays that Woman, projecting herself
+dramatically by my hands (a process over which I assure you I
+have no more real control than I have over my wife), behaves just
+as Woman did in the plays of Shakespear.
+
+And so your Don Juan has come to birth as a stage projection of
+the tragi-comic love chase of the man by the woman; and my Don
+Juan is the quarry instead of the huntsman. Yet he is a true Don
+Juan, with a sense of reality that disables convention, defying
+to the last the fate which finally overtakes him. The woman's
+need of him to enable her to carry on Nature's most urgent work,
+does not prevail against him until his resistance gathers her
+energy to a climax at which she dares to throw away her customary
+exploitations of the conventional affectionate and dutiful poses,
+and claim him by natural right for a purpose that far transcends
+their mortal personal purposes.
+
+Among the friends to whom I have read this play in manuscript are
+some of our own sex who are shocked at the "unscrupulousness,"
+meaning the total disregard of masculine fastidiousness, with
+which the woman pursues her purpose. It does not occur to them
+that if women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically,
+there would be an end of the race. Is there anything meaner
+then to throw necessary work upon other people and then disparage
+it as unworthy and indelicate. We laugh at the haughty American
+nation because it makes the negro clean its boots and then proves
+the moral and physical inferiority of the negro by the fact that
+he is a shoeblack; but we ourselves throw the whole drudgery of
+creation on one sex, and then imply that no female of any
+womanliness or delicacy would initiate any effort in that
+direction. There are no limits to male hypocrisy in this matter.
+No doubt there are moments when man's sexual immunities are made
+acutely humiliating to him. When the terrible moment of birth
+arrives, its supreme importance and its superhuman effort and
+peril, in which the father has no part, dwarf him into the
+meanest insignificance: he slinks out of the way of the humblest
+petticoat, happy if he be poor enough to be pushed out of the
+house to outface his ignominy by drunken rejoicings. But when the
+crisis is over he takes his revenge, swaggering as the
+breadwinner, and speaking of Woman's "sphere" with condescension,
+even with chivalry, as if the kitchen and the nursery were less
+important than the office in the city. When his swagger is
+exhausted he drivels into erotic poetry or sentimental
+uxoriousness; and the Tennysonian King Arthur posing as Guinevere
+becomes Don Quixote grovelling before Dulcinea. You must admit
+that here Nature beats Comedy out of the field: the wildest
+hominist or feminist farce is insipid after the most commonplace
+"slice of life." The pretence that women do not take the
+initiative is part of the farce. Why, the whole world is strewn
+with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by
+women. Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a
+crushing tax on bachelors. Men, on the other hand, attach
+penalties to marriage, depriving women of property, of the
+franchise, of the free use of their limbs, of that ancient symbol
+of immortality, the right to make oneself at home in the house of
+God by taking off the hat, of everything that he can force Woman
+to dispense with without compelling himself to dispense with her.
+All in vain. Woman must marry because the race must perish
+without her travail: if the risk of death and the certainty of
+pain, danger and unutterable discomforts cannot deter her,
+slavery and swaddled ankles will not. And yet we assume that the
+force that carries women through all these perils and hardships,
+stops abashed before the primnesses of our behavior for young
+ladies. It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until
+she is wooed. Nay, she often does wait motionless. That is how
+the spider waits for the fly. But the spider spins her web. And
+if the fly, like my hero, shows a strength that promises to
+extricate him, how swiftly does she abandon her pretence of
+passiveness, and openly fling coil after coil about him until he
+is secured for ever!
+
+If the really impressive books and other art-works of the world
+were produced by ordinary men, they would express more fear of
+women's pursuit than love of their illusory beauty. But ordinary
+men cannot produce really impressive art-works. Those who can are
+men of genius: that is, men selected by Nature to carry on the
+work of building up an intellectual consciousness of her own
+instinctive purpose. Accordingly, we observe in the man of genius
+all the unscrupulousness and all the "self-sacrifice" (the two
+things are the same) of Woman. He will risk the stake and the
+cross; starve, when necessary, in a garret all his life; study
+women and live on their work and care as Darwin studied worms and
+lived upon sheep; work his nerves into rags without payment, a
+sublime altruist in his disregard of himself, an atrocious
+egotist in his disregard of others. Here Woman meets a purpose as
+impersonal, as irresistible as her own; and the clash is
+sometimes tragic. When it is complicated by the genius being a
+woman, then the game is one for a king of critics: your George
+Sand becomes a mother to gain experience for the novelist and to
+develop her, and gobbles up men of genius, Chopins, Mussets and
+the like, as mere hors d'oeuvres.
+
+I state the extreme case, of course; but what is true of the
+great man who incarnates the philosophic consciousness of Life
+and the woman who incarnates its fecundity, is true in some
+degree of all geniuses and all women. Hence it is that the
+world's books get written, its pictures painted, its statues
+modelled, its symphonies composed, by people who are free of the
+otherwise universal dominion of the tyranny of sex. Which leads
+us to the conclusion, astonishing to the vulgar, that art,
+instead of being before all things the expression of the normal
+sexual situation, is really the only department in which sex is a
+superseded and secondary power, with its consciousness so
+confused and its purpose so perverted, that its ideas are mere
+fantasy to common men. Whether the artist becomes poet or
+philosopher, moralist or founder of a religion, his sexual
+doctrine is nothing but a barren special pleading for pleasure,
+excitement, and knowledge when he is young, and for contemplative
+tranquillity when he is old and satiated. Romance and Asceticism,
+Amorism and Puritanism are equally unreal in the great Philistine
+world. The world shown us in books, whether the books be
+confessed epics or professed gospels, or in codes, or in
+political orations, or in philosophic systems, is not the main
+world at all: it is only the self-consciousness of certain
+abnormal people who have the specific artistic talent and
+temperament. A serious matter this for you and me, because the
+man whose consciousness does not correspond to that of the
+majority is a madman; and the old habit of worshipping madmen is
+giving way to the new habit of locking them up. And since what we
+call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the
+substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life,
+of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real, education,
+as you no doubt observed at Oxford, destroys, by supplantation,
+every mind that is not strong enough to see through the imposture
+and to use the great Masters of Arts as what they really are and
+no more: that is, patentees of highly questionable methods of
+thinking, and manufacturers of highly questionable, and for the
+majority but half valid representations of life. The schoolboy
+who uses his Homer to throw at his fellow's head makes perhaps
+the safest and most rational use of him; and I observe with
+reassurance that you occasionally do the same, in your prime,
+with your Aristotle.
+
+Fortunately for us, whose minds have been so overwhelmingly
+sophisticated by literature, what produces all these treatises
+and poems and scriptures of one sort or another is the struggle
+of Life to become divinely conscious of itself instead of blindly
+stumbling hither and thither in the line of least resistance.
+Hence there is a driving towards truth in all books on matters
+where the writer, though exceptionally gifted is normally
+constituted, and has no private axe to grind. Copernicus had no
+motive for misleading his fellowmen as to the place of the sun in
+the solar system: he looked for it as honestly as a shepherd
+seeks his path in a mist. But Copernicus would not have written
+love stories scientifically. When it comes to sex relations, the
+man of genius does not share the common man's danger of capture,
+nor the woman of genius the common woman's overwhelming
+specialization. And that is why our scriptures and other art
+works, when they deal with love, turn from honest attempts at
+science in physics to romantic nonsense, erotic ecstasy, or the
+stern asceticism of satiety ("the road of excess leads to the
+palace of wisdom" said William Blake; for "you never know what is
+enough unless you know what is more than enough").
+
+There is a political aspect of this sex question which is too big
+for my comedy, and too momentous to be passed over without
+culpable frivolity. It is impossible to demonstrate that the
+initiative in sex transactions remains with Woman, and has been
+confirmed to her, so far, more and more by the suppression of
+rapine and discouragement of importunity, without being driven to
+very serious reflections on the fact that this initiative is
+politically the most important of all the initiatives, because
+our political experiment of democracy, the last refuge of cheap
+misgovernment, will ruin us if our citizens are ill bred.
+
+When we two were born, this country was still dominated by a
+selected class bred by political marriages. The commercial class
+had not then completed the first twenty-five years of its new
+share of political power; and it was itself selected by money
+qualification, and bred, if not by political marriage, at least
+by a pretty rigorous class marriage. Aristocracy and plutocracy
+still furnish the figureheads of politics; but they are now
+dependent on the votes of the promiscuously bred masses. And
+this, if you please, at the very moment when the political
+problem, having suddenly ceased to mean a very limited and
+occasional interference, mostly by way of jobbing public
+appointments, in the mismanagement of a tight but parochial
+little island, with occasional meaningless prosecution of
+dynastic wars, has become the industrial reorganization of
+Britain, the construction of a practically international
+Commonwealth, and the partition of the whole of Africa and
+perhaps the whole of Asia by the civilized Powers. Can you
+believe that the people whose conceptions of society and conduct,
+whose power of attention and scope of interest, are measured by
+the British theatre as you know it to-day, can either handle this
+colossal task themselves, or understand and support the sort of
+mind and character that is (at least comparatively) capable of
+handling it? For remember: what our voters are in the pit and
+gallery they are also in the polling booth. We are all now under
+what Burke called "the hoofs of the swinish multitude." Burke's
+language gave great offence because the implied exceptions to its
+universal application made it a class insult; and it certainly
+was not for the pot to call the kettle black. The aristocracy he
+defended, in spite of the political marriages by which it tried
+to secure breeding for itself, had its mind undertrained by silly
+schoolmasters and governesses, its character corrupted by
+gratuitous luxury, its self-respect adulterated to complete
+spuriousness by flattery and flunkeyism. It is no better to-day
+and never will be any better: our very peasants have something
+morally hardier in them that culminates occasionally in a Bunyan,
+a Burns, or a Carlyle. But observe, this aristocracy, which was
+overpowered from 1832 to 1885 by the middle class, has come back
+to power by the votes of "the swinish multitude." Tom Paine has
+triumphed over Edmund Burke; and the swine are now courted
+electors. How many of their own class have these electors sent to
+parliament? Hardly a dozen out of 670, and these only under the
+persuasion of conspicuous personal qualifications and popular
+eloquence. The multitude thus pronounces judgment on its own
+units: it admits itself unfit to govern, and will vote only for a
+man morphologically and generically transfigured by palatial
+residence and equipage, by transcendent tailoring, by the glamor
+of aristocratic kinship. Well, we two know these transfigured
+persons, these college passmen, these well groomed monocular
+Algys and Bobbies, these cricketers to whom age brings golf
+instead of wisdom, these plutocratic products of "the nail and
+sarspan business as he got his money by." Do you know whether to
+laugh or cry at the notion that they, poor devils! will drive a
+team of continents as they drive a four-in-hand; turn a jostling
+anarchy of casual trade and speculation into an ordered
+productivity; and federate our colonies into a world-Power of the
+first magnitude? Give these people the most perfect political
+constitution and the soundest political program that benevolent
+omniscience can devise for them, and they will interpret it into
+mere fashionable folly or canting charity as infallibly as a
+savage converts the philosophical theology of a Scotch missionary
+into crude African idolatry.
+
+I do not know whether you have any illusions left on the subject
+of education, progress, and so forth. I have none. Any
+pamphleteer can show the way to better things; but when there is
+no will there is no way. My nurse was fond of remarking that you
+cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and the more I see
+of the efforts of our churches and universities and literary
+sages to raise the mass above its own level, the more convinced I
+am that my nurse was right. Progress can do nothing but make the
+most of us all as we are, and that most would clearly not be
+enough even if those who are already raised out of the lowest
+abysses would allow the others a chance. The bubble of Heredity
+has been pricked: the certainty that acquirements are negligible
+as elements in practical heredity has demolished the hopes of the
+educationists as well as the terrors of the degeneracy mongers;
+and we know now that there is no hereditary "governing class" any
+more than a hereditary hooliganism. We must either breed
+political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on
+us by the failure of the older alternatives. Yet if Despotism
+failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance
+has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable
+voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern
+in person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for
+administration, can at least recognize and appreciate capacity
+and benevolence in others, and so govern through capably
+benevolent representatives? Where are such voters to be found
+to-day? Nowhere. Promiscuous breeding has produced a weakness of
+character that is too timid to face the full stringency of a
+thoroughly competitive struggle for existence and too lazy and
+petty to organize the commonwealth co-operatively. Being cowards,
+we defeat natural selection under cover of philanthropy: being
+sluggards, we neglect artificial selection under cover of
+delicacy and morality.
+
+Yet we must get an electorate of capable critics or collapse as
+Rome and Egypt collapsed. At this moment the Roman decadent phase
+of panem et circenses is being inaugurated under our eyes. Our
+newspapers and melodramas are blustering about our imperial
+destiny; but our eyes and hearts turn eagerly to the American
+millionaire. As his hand goes down to his pocket, our fingers go
+up to the brims of our hats by instinct. Our ideal prosperity is
+not the prosperity of the industrial north, but the prosperity of
+the Isle of Wight, of Folkestone and Ramsgate, of Nice and Monte
+Carlo. That is the only prosperity you see on the stage, where
+the workers are all footmen, parlourmaids, comic lodging-letters
+and fashionable professional men, whilst the heroes and heroines
+are miraculously provided with unlimited dividends, and eat
+gratuitously, like the knights in Don Quixote's books of
+chivalry.
+
+The city papers prate of the competition of Bombay with
+Manchester and the like. The real competition is the competition
+of Regent Street with the Rue de Rivoli, of Brighton and the
+south coast with the Riviera, for the spending money of the
+American Trusts. What is all this growing love of pageantry, this
+effusive loyalty, this officious rising and uncovering at a wave
+from a flag or a blast from a brass band? Imperialism: Not a bit
+of it. Obsequiousness, servility, cupidity roused by the
+prevailing smell of money. When Mr Carnegie rattled his millions
+in his pockets all England became one rapacious cringe. Only,
+when Rhodes (who had probably been reading my Socialism for
+Millionaires) left word that no idler was to inherit his estate,
+the bent backs straightened mistrustfully for a moment. Could it
+be that the Diamond King was no gentleman after all? However, it
+was easy to ignore a rich man's solecism. The ungentlemanly
+clause was not mentioned again; and the backs soon bowed
+themselves back into their natural shape.
+
+But I hear you asking me in alarm whether I have actually put all
+this tub thumping into a Don Juan comedy. I have not. I have only
+made my Don Juan a political pamphleteer, and given you his
+pamphlet in full by way of appendix. You will find it at the end
+of the book. I am sorry to say that it is a common practice with
+romancers to announce their hero as a man of extraordinary
+genius, and to leave his works entirely to the reader's
+imagination; so that at the end of the book you whisper to
+yourself ruefully that but for the author's solemn preliminary
+assurance you should hardly have given the gentleman credit for
+ordinary good sense. You cannot accuse me of this pitiable
+barrenness, this feeble evasion. I not only tell you that my hero
+wrote a revolutionists' handbook: I give you the handbook at full
+length for your edification if you care to read it. And in that
+handbook you will find the politics of the sex question as I
+conceive Don Juan's descendant to understand them. Not that I
+disclaim the fullest responsibility for his opinions and for
+those of all my characters, pleasant and unpleasant. They are all
+right from their several points of view; and their points of view
+are, for the dramatic moment, mine also. This may puzzle the
+people who believe that there is such a thing as an absolutely
+right point of view, usually their own. It may seem to them that
+nobody who doubts this can be in a state of grace. However that
+may be, it is certainly true that nobody who agrees with them can
+possibly be a dramatist, or indeed anything else that turns upon
+a knowledge of mankind. Hence it has been pointed out that
+Shakespear had no conscience. Neither have I, in that sense.
+
+You may, however, remind me that this digression of mine into
+politics was preceded by a very convincing demonstration that the
+artist never catches the point of view of the common man on the
+question of sex, because he is not in the same predicament. I
+first prove that anything I write on the relation of the sexes is
+sure to be misleading; and then I proceed to write a Don Juan
+play. Well, if you insist on asking me why I behave in this
+absurd way, I can only reply that you asked me to, and that in
+any case my treatment of the subject may be valid for the artist,
+amusing to the amateur, and at least intelligible and therefore
+possibly suggestive to the Philistine. Every man who records his
+illusions is providing data for the genuinely scientific
+psychology which the world still waits for. I plank down my view
+of the existing relations of men to women in the most highly
+civilized society for what it is worth. It is a view like any
+other view and no more, neither true nor false, but, I hope, a
+way of looking at the subject which throws into the familiar
+order of cause and effect a sufficient body of fact and
+experience to be interesting to you, if not to the play-going
+public of London. I have certainly shown little consideration for
+that public in this enterprise; but I know that it has the
+friendliest disposition towards you and me as far as it has any
+consciousness of our existence, and quite understands that what I
+write for you must pass at a considerable height over its simple
+romantic head. It will take my books as read and my genius for
+granted, trusting me to put forth work of such quality as shall
+bear out its verdict. So we may disport ourselves on our own
+plane to the top of our bent; and if any gentleman points out
+that neither this epistle dedicatory nor the dream of Don Juan in
+the third act of the ensuing comedy is suitable for immediate
+production at a popular theatre we need not contradict him.
+Napoleon provided Talma with a pit of kings, with what effect on
+Talma's acting is not recorded. As for me, what I have always
+wanted is a pit of philosophers; and this is a play for such a
+pit.
+
+I should make formal acknowledgment to the authors whom I have
+pillaged in the following pages if I could recollect them a11.
+The theft of the brigand-poetaster from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is
+deliberate; and the metamorphosis of Leporello into Enry Straker,
+motor engineer and New Man, is an intentional dramatic sketch for
+the contemporary embryo of Mr H. G. Wells's anticipation of the
+efficient engineering class which will, he hopes, finally sweep
+the jabberers out of the way of civilization. Mr Barrio has also,
+whilst I am correcting my proofs, delighted London with a servant
+who knows more than his masters. The conception of Mendoza
+Limited I trace back to a certain West Indian colonial secretary,
+who, at a period when he and I and Mr Sidney Webb were sowing our
+political wild oats as a sort of Fabian Three Musketeers, without
+any prevision of the surprising respectability of the crop that
+followed, recommended Webb, the encyclopedic and inexhaustible,
+to form himself into a company for the benefit of the
+shareholders. Octavius I take over unaltered from Mozart; and I
+hereby authorize any actor who impersonates him, to sing "Dalla
+sua pace" (if he can) at any convenient moment during the
+representation. Ann was suggested to me by the fifteenth century
+Dutch morality called Everyman, which Mr William Poel has lately
+resuscitated so triumphantly. I trust he will work that vein
+further, and recognize that Elizabethan Renascence fustian is no
+more bearable after medieval poesy than Scribe after Ibsen. As I
+sat watching Everyman at the Charterhouse, I said to myself Why
+not Everywoman? Ann was the result: every woman is not Ann; but
+Ann is Everywoman.
+
+That the author of Everyman was no mere artist, but an
+artist-philosopher, and that the artist-philosophers are the only
+sort of artists I take quite seriously, will be no news to you.
+Even Plato and Boswell, as the dramatists who invented Socrates
+and Dr Johnson, impress me more deeply than the romantic
+playwrights. Ever since, as a boy, I first breathed the air of
+the transcendental regions at a performance of Mozart's
+Zauberflote, I have been proof against the garish splendors and
+alcoholic excitements of the ordinary stage combinations of
+Tappertitian romance with the police intelligence. Bunyan, Blake,
+Hogarth and Turner (these four apart and above all the English
+Classics), Goethe, Shelley, Schopenhaur, Wagner, Ibsen, Morris,
+Tolstoy, and Nietzsche are among the writers whose peculiar sense
+of the world I recognize as more or less akin to my own. Mark the
+word peculiar. I read Dickens and Shakespear without shame or
+stint; but their pregnant observations and demonstrations of life
+are not co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion: on the
+contrary, Dickens's sentimental assumptions are violently
+contradicted by his observations; and Shakespear's pessimism is
+only his wounded humanity. Both have the specific genius of the
+fictionist and the common sympathies of human feeling and thought
+in pre-eminent degree. They are often saner and shrewder than the
+philosophers just as Sancho-Panza was often saner and shrewder
+than Don Quixote. They clear away vast masses of oppressive
+gravity by their sense of the ridiculous, which is at bottom a
+combination of sound moral judgment with lighthearted good
+humor. But they are concerned with the diversities of the world
+instead of with its unities: they are so irreligious that they
+exploit popular religion for professional purposes without
+delicacy or scruple (for example, Sydney Carton and the ghost in
+Hamlet!): they are anarchical, and cannot balance their exposures
+of Angelo and Dogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock and Mr Tite
+Barnacle, with any portrait of a prophet or a worthy leader: they
+have no constructive ideas: they regard those who have them as
+dangerous fanatics: in all their fictions there is no leading
+thought or inspiration for which any man could conceivably risk
+the spoiling of his hat in a shower, much less his life. Both are
+alike forced to borrow motives for the more strenuous actions of
+their personages from the common stockpot of melodramatic plots;
+so that Hamlet has to be stimulated by the prejudices of a
+policeman and Macbeth by the cupidities of a bushranger. Dickens,
+without the excuse of having to manufacture motives for Hamlets
+and Macbeths, superfluously punt his crew down the stream of his
+monthly parts by mechanical devices which I leave you to
+describe, my own memory being quite baffled by the simplest
+question as to Monks in Oliver Twist, or the long lost parentage
+of Smike, or the relations between the Dorrit and Clennam
+families so inopportunely discovered by Monsieur Rigaud Blandois.
+The truth is, the world was to Shakespear a great "stage of
+fools" on which he was utterly bewildered. He could see no sort
+of sense in living at all; and Dickens saved himself from the
+despair of the dream in The Chimes by taking the world for
+granted and busying himself with its details. Neither of them
+could do anything with a serious positive character: they could
+place a human figure before you with perfect verisimilitude; but
+when the moment came for making it live and move, they found,
+unless it made them laugh, that they had a puppet on their hands,
+and had to invent some artificial external stimulus to make it
+work. This is what is the matter with Hamlet all through: he has
+no will except in his bursts of temper. Foolish Bardolaters make
+a virtue of this after their fashion: they declare that the play
+is the tragedy of irresolution; but all Shakespear's projections
+of the deepest humanity he knew have the same defect: their
+characters and manners are lifelike; but their actions are forced
+on them from without, and the external force is grotesquely
+inappropriate except when it is quite conventional, as in the
+case of Henry V. Falstaff is more vivid than any of these serious
+reflective characters, because he is self-acting: his motives are
+his own appetites and instincts and humors. Richard III, too, is
+delightful as the whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make
+love to the corpse's widow; but when, in the next act, he is
+replaced by a stage villain who smothers babies and offs with
+people's heads, we are revolted at the imposture and repudiate
+the changeling. Faulconbridge, Coriolanus, Leontes are admirable
+descriptions of instinctive temperaments: indeed the play of
+Coriolanus is the greatest of Shakespear's comedies; but
+description is not philosophy; and comedy neither compromises the
+author nor reveals him. He must be judged by those characters
+into which he puts what he knows of himself, his Hamlets and
+Macbeths and Lears and Prosperos. If these characters are
+agonizing in a void about factitious melodramatic murders and
+revenges and the like, whilst the comic characters walk with
+their feet on solid ground, vivid and amusing, you know that the
+author has much to show and nothing to teach. The comparison
+between Falstaff and Prospero is like the comparison between
+Micawber and David Copperfield. At the end of the book you know
+Micawber, whereas you only know what has happened to David, and
+are not interested enough in him to wonder what his politics or
+religion might be if anything so stupendous as a religious or
+political idea, or a general idea of any sort, were to occur to
+him. He is tolerable as a child; but he never becomes a man, and
+might be left out of his own biography altogether but for his
+usefulness as a stage confidant, a Horatio or "Charles his
+friend" what they call on the stage a feeder.
+
+Now you cannot say this of the works of the artist-philosophers.
+You cannot say it, for instance, of The Pilgrim's Progress. Put
+your Shakespearian hero and coward, Henry V and Pistol or
+Parolles, beside Mr Valiant and Mr Fearing, and you have a sudden
+revelation of the abyss that lies between the fashionable author
+who could see nothing in the world but personal aims and the
+tragedy of their disappointment or the comedy of their
+incongruity, and the field preacher who achieved virtue and
+courage by identifying himself with the purpose of the world as
+he understood it. The contrast is enormous: Bunyan's coward stirs
+your blood more than Shakespear's hero, who actually leaves you
+cold and secretly hostile. You suddenly see that Shakespear, with
+all his flashes and divinations, never understood virtue and
+courage, never conceived how any man who was not a fool could,
+like Bunyan's hero, look back from the brink of the river of
+death over the strife and labor of his pilgrimage, and say "yet
+do I not repent me"; or, with the panache of a millionaire,
+bequeath "my sword to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage,
+and my courage and skill to him that can get it." This is the
+true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by
+yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before
+you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature
+instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and
+grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to
+making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is the
+being used by personally minded men for purposes which you
+recognize to be base. All the rest is at worst mere misfortune or
+mortality: this alone is misery, slavery, hell on earth; and the
+revolt against it is the only force that offers a man's work to
+the poor artist, whom our personally minded rich people would so
+willingly employ as pandar, buffoon, beauty monger,
+sentimentalizer and the like.
+
+It may seem a long step from Bunyan to Nietzsche; but the
+difference between their conclusions is purely formal. Bunyan's
+perception that righteousness is filthy rags, his scorn for Mr
+Legality in the village of Morality, his defiance of the Church
+as the supplanter of religion, his insistence on courage as the
+virtue of virtues, his estimate of the career of the
+conventionally respectable and sensible Worldly Wiseman as no
+better at bottom than the life and death of Mr Badman: all this,
+expressed by Bunyan in the terms of a tinker's theology, is what
+Nietzsche has expressed in terms of post-Darwinian,
+post-Schopenhaurian philosophy; Wagner in terms of polytheistic
+mythology; and Ibsen in terms of mid-XIX century Parisian
+dramaturgy. Nothing is new in these matters except their
+novelties: for instance, it is a novelty to call Justification by
+Faith "Wille," and Justification by Works "Vorstellung." The sole
+use of the novelty is that you and I buy and read Schopenhaur's
+treatise on Will and Representation when we should not dream of
+buying a set of sermons on Faith versus Works. At bottom the
+controversy is the same, and the dramatic results are the same.
+Bunyan makes no attempt to present his pilgrims as more sensible
+or better conducted than Mr Worldly Wiseman. Mr W. W.'s worst
+enemies, as Mr Embezzler, Mr Never-go-to-Church-on-Sunday, Mr Bad
+Form, Mr Murderer, Mr Burglar, Mr Co-respondent, Mr Blackmailer,
+Mr Cad, Mr Drunkard, Mr Labor Agitator and so forth, can read the
+Pilgrim's Progress without finding a word said against them;
+whereas the respectable people who snub them and put them in
+prison, such as Mr W.W. himself and his young friend Civility;
+Formalist and Hypocrisy; Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick
+(who were clearly young university men of good family and high
+feeding); that brisk lad Ignorance, Talkative, By-Ends of
+Fairspeech and his mother-in-law Lady Feigning, and other
+reputable gentlemen and citizens, catch it very severely. Even
+Little Faith, though he gets to heaven at last, is given to
+understand that it served him right to be mobbed by the brothers
+Faint Heart, Mistrust, and Guilt, all three recognized members of
+respectable society and veritable pillars of the law. The whole
+allegory is a consistent attack on morality and respectability,
+without a word that one can remember against vice and crime.
+Exactly what is complained of in Nietzsche and Ibsen, is it not?
+And also exactly what would be complained of in all the
+literature which is great enough and old enough to have attained
+canonical rank, officially or unofficially, were it not that
+books are admitted to the canon by a compact which confesses
+their greatness in consideration of abrogating their meaning; so
+that the reverend rector can agree with the prophet Micah as to
+his inspired style without being committed to any complicity in
+Micah's furiously Radical opinions. Why, even I, as I force
+myself; pen in hand, into recognition and civility, find all the
+force of my onslaught destroyed by a simple policy of
+non-resistance. In vain do I redouble the violence of the
+language in which I proclaim my heterodoxies. I rail at the
+theistic credulity of Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of
+Shelley, the revival of tribal soothsaying and idolatrous rites
+which Huxley called Science and mistook for an advance on the
+Pentateuch, no less than at the welter of ecclesiastical and
+professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of
+violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry. Even
+atheists reproach me with infidelity and anarchists with nihilism
+because I cannot endure their moral tirades. And yet, instead of
+exclaiming "Send this inconceivable Satanist to the stake," the
+respectable newspapers pith me by announcing "another book by
+this brilliant and thoughtful writer." And the ordinary citizen,
+knowing that an author who is well spoken of by a respectable
+newspaper must be all right, reads me, as he reads Micah, with
+undisturbed edification from his own point of view. It is
+narrated that in the eighteenseventies an old lady, a very devout
+Methodist, moved from Colchester to a house in the neighborhood
+of the City Road, in London, where, mistaking the Hall of Science
+for a chapel, she sat at the feet of Charles Bradlaugh for many
+years, entranced by his eloquence, without questioning his
+orthodoxy or moulting a feather of her faith. I fear I small be
+defrauded of my just martyrdom in the same way.
+
+However, I am digressing, as a man with a grievance always does.
+And after all, the main thing in determining the artistic quality
+of a book is not the opinions it propagates, but the fact that
+the writer has opinions. The old lady from Colchester was right
+to sun her simple soul in the energetic radiance of Bradlaugh's
+genuine beliefs and disbeliefs rather than in the chill of such
+mere painting of light and heat as elocution and convention can
+achieve. My contempt for belles lettres, and for amateurs who
+become the heroes of the fanciers of literary virtuosity, is not
+founded on any illusion of mind as to the permanence of those
+forms of thought (call them opinions) by which I strive to
+communicate my bent to my fellows. To younger men they are
+already outmoded; for though they have no more lost their logic
+than an eighteenth century pastel has lost its drawing or its
+color, yet, like the pastel, they grow indefinably shabby, and
+will grow shabbier until they cease to count at all, when my
+books will either perish, or, if the world is still poor enough
+to want them, will have to stand, with Bunyan's, by quite
+amorphous qualities of temper and energy. With this conviction I
+cannot be a bellettrist. No doubt I must recognize, as even the
+Ancient Mariner did, that I must tell my story entertainingly if
+I am to hold the wedding guest spellbound in spite of the siren
+sounds of the loud bassoon. But "for art's sake" alone I would
+not face the toil of writing a single sentence. I know that there
+are men who, having nothing to say and nothing to write, are
+nevertheless so in love with oratory and with literature that
+they keep desperately repeating as much as they can understand of
+what others have said or written aforetime. I know that the
+leisurely tricks which their want of conviction leaves them free
+to play with the diluted and misapprehended message supply them
+with a pleasant parlor game which they call style. I can pity
+their dotage and even sympathize with their fancy. But a true
+original style is never achieved for its own sake: a man may pay
+from a shilling to a guinea, according to his means, to see,
+hear, or read another man's act of genius; but he will not pay
+with his whole life and soul to become a mere virtuoso in
+literature, exhibiting an accomplishment which will not even make
+money for him, like fiddle playing. Effectiveness of assertion is
+the Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no
+style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go
+as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction
+will carry him. Disprove his assertion after it is made, yet its
+style remains. Darwin has no more destroyed the style of Job nor
+of Handel than Martin Luther destroyed the style of Giotto. All
+the assertions get disproved sooner or later; and so we find the
+world full of a magnificent debris of artistic fossils, with the
+matter-of-fact credibility gone clean out of them, but the form
+still splendid. And that is why the old masters play the deuce
+with our mere susceptibles. Your Royal Academician thinks he can
+get the style of Giotto without Giotto's beliefs, and correct his
+perspective into the bargain. Your man of letters thinks he can
+get Bunyan's or Shakespear's style without Bunyan's conviction or
+Shakespear's apprehension, especially if he takes care not to
+split his infinitives. And so with your Doctors of Music, who,
+with their collections of discords duly prepared and resolved or
+retarded or anticipated in the manner of the great composers,
+think they can learn the art of Palestrina from Cherubim's
+treatise. All this academic art is far worse than the trade in
+sham antique furniture; for the man who sells me an oaken chest
+which he swears was made in the XIII century, though as a matter
+of fact he made it himself only yesterday, at least does not
+pretend that there are any modern ideas in it, whereas your
+academic copier of fossils offers them to you as the latest
+outpouring of the human spirit, and, worst of all, kidnaps young
+people as pupils and persuades them that his limitations are
+rules, his observances dexterities, his timidities good taste,
+and his emptinesses purities. And when he declares that art
+should not be didactic, all the people who have nothing to teach
+and all the people who don't want to learn agree with him
+emphatically.
+
+I pride myself on not being one of these susceptible: If you
+study the electric light with which I supply you in that
+Bumbledonian public capacity of mine over which you make merry
+from time to time, you will find that your house contains a great
+quantity of highly susceptible copper wire which gorges itself
+with electricity and gives you no light whatever. But here and
+there occurs a scrap of intensely insusceptible, intensely
+resistant material; and that stubborn scrap grapples with the
+current and will not let it through until it has made itself
+useful to you as those two vital qualities of literature, light
+and heat. Now if I am to be no mere copper wire amateur but a
+luminous author, I must also be a most intensely refractory
+person, liable to go out and to go wrong at inconvenient moments,
+and with incendiary possibilities. These are the faults of my
+qualities; and I assure you that I sometimes dislike myself so
+much that when some irritable reviewer chances at that moment to
+pitch into me with zest, I feel unspeakably relieved and
+obliged. But I never dream of reforming, knowing that I must take
+myself as I am and get what work I can out of myself. All this
+you will understand; for there is community of material between
+us: we are both critics of life as well as of art; and you have
+perhaps said to yourself when I have passed your windows, "There,
+but for the grace of God, go I." An awful and chastening
+reflection, which shall be the closing cadence of this
+immoderately long letter from yours faithfully,
+
+G. BERNARD SHAW.
+
+WOKING, 1903
+
+
+
+ACT I
+
+Roebuck Ramsden is in his study, opening the morning letters. The
+study, handsomely and solidly furnished, proclaims the man of
+means. Not a speck of dust is visible: it is clear that there are
+at least two housemaids and a parlormaid downstairs, and a
+housekeeper upstairs who does not let them spare elbow-grease.
+Even the top of Roebuck's head is polished: on a sunshiny day he
+could heliograph his orders to distant camps by merely nodding.
+In no other respect, however, does he suggest the military man.
+It is in active civil life that men get his broad air of
+importance, his dignified expectation of deference, his
+determinate mouth disarmed and refined since the hour of his
+success by the withdrawal of opposition and the concession of
+comfort and precedence and power. He is more than a highly
+respectable man: he is marked out as a president of highly
+respectable men, a chairman among directors, an alderman among
+councillors, a mayor among aldermen. Four tufts of iron-grey
+hair, which will soon be as white as isinglass, and are in other
+respects not at all unlike it, grow in two symmetrical pairs
+above his ears and at the angles of his spreading jaws. He wears
+a black frock coat, a white waistcoat (it is bright spring
+weather), and trousers, neither black nor perceptibly blue, of
+one of those indefinitely mixed hues which the modern clothier
+has produced to harmonize with the religions of respectable men.
+He has not been out of doors yet to-day; so he still wears his
+slippers, his boots being ready for him on the hearthrug.
+Surmising that he has no valet, and seeing that he has no
+secretary with a shorthand notebook and a typewriter, one
+meditates on how little our great burgess domesticity has been
+disturbed by new fashions and methods, or by the enterprise of
+the railway and hotel companies which sell you a Saturday to
+Monday of life at Folkestone as a real gentleman for two guineas,
+first class fares both ways included.
+
+How old is Roebuck? The question is important on the threshold of
+a drama of ideas; for under such circumstances everything depends
+on whether his adolescence belonged to the sixties or to the
+eighties. He was born, as a matter of fact, in 1839, and was a
+Unitarian and Free Trader from his boyhood, and an Evolutionist
+from the publication of the Origin of Species. Consequently he
+has always classed himself as an advanced thinker and fearlessly
+outspoken reformer.
+
+Sitting at his writing table, he has on his right the windows
+giving on Portland Place. Through these, as through a proscenium,
+the curious spectator may contemplate his profile as well as the
+blinds will permit. On his left is the inner wall, with a stately
+bookcase, and the door not quite in the middle, but somewhat
+further from him. Against the wall opposite him are two busts on
+pillars: one, to his left, of John Bright; the other, to his
+right, of Mr Herbert Spencer. Between them hang an engraved
+portrait of Richard Cobden; enlarged photographs of Martineau,
+Huxley, and George Eliot; autotypes of allegories by Mr G.F.
+Watts (for Roebuck believed in the fine arts with all the
+earnestness of a man who does not understand them), and an
+impression of Dupont's engraving of Delaroche's Beaux Artes
+hemicycle, representing the great men of all ages. On the wall
+behind him, above the mantelshelf, is a family portrait of
+impenetrable obscurity.
+
+A chair stands near the writing table for the convenience of
+business visitors. Two other chairs are against the wall between
+the busts.
+
+A parlormaid enters with a visitor's card. Roebuck takes it, and
+nods, pleased. Evidently a welcome caller.
+
+RAMSDEN. Show him up.
+
+The parlormaid goes out and returns with the visitor.
+
+THE MAID. Mr Robinson.
+
+Mr Robinson is really an uncommonly nice looking young fellow. He
+must, one thinks, be the jeune premier; for it is not in reason
+to suppose that a second such attractive male figure should
+appear in one story. The slim shapely frame, the elegant suit of
+new mourning, the small head and regular features, the pretty
+little moustache, the frank clear eyes, the wholesome bloom
+and the youthful complexion, the well brushed glossy hair, not
+curly, but of fine texture and good dark color, the arch of good
+nature in the eyebrows, the erect forehead and neatly pointed
+chin, all announce the man who will love and suffer later on.
+And that he will not do so without sympathy is guaranteed by an
+engaging sincerity and eager modest serviceableness which stamp
+him as a man of amiable nature. The moment he appears, Ramsden's
+face expands into fatherly liking and welcome, an expression
+which drops into one of decorous grief as the young man
+approaches him with sorrow in his face as well as in his black
+clothes. Ramsden seems to know the nature of the bereavement. As
+the visitor advances silently to the writing table, the old man
+rises and shakes his hand across it without a word: a long,
+affectionate shake which tells the story of a recent sorrow
+common to both.
+
+RAMSDEN. [concluding the handshake and cheering up] Well, well,
+Octavius, it's the common lot. We must all face it someday. Sit
+down.
+
+Octavius takes the visitor's chair. Ramsden replaces himself in
+his own.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Yes: we must face it, Mr Ramsden. But I owed him a
+great deal. He did everything for me that my father could have
+done if he had lived.
+
+RAMSDEN. He had no son of his own, you see.
+
+OCTAVIUS. But he had daughters; and yet he was as good to my
+sister as to me. And his death was so sudden! I always intended
+to thank him--to let him know that I had not taken all his care
+of me as a matter of course, as any boy takes his father's care.
+But I waited for an opportunity and now he is dead--dropped
+without a moment's warning. He will never know what I felt. [He
+takes out his handkerchief and cries unaffectedly].
+
+RAMSDEN. How do we know that, Octavius? He may know it: we
+cannot tell. Come! Don't grieve. [Octavius masters himself and
+puts up his handkerchief]. That's right. Now let me tell you
+something to console you. The last time I saw him--it was in
+this very room--he said to me: "Tavy is a generous lad and the
+soul of honor; and when I see how little consideration other men
+get from their sons, I realize how much better than a son he's
+been to me." There! Doesn't that do you good?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Mr Ramsden: he used to say to me that he had met only
+one man in the world who was the soul of honor, and that was
+Roebuck Ramsden.
+
+RAMSDEN. Oh, that was his partiality: we were very old friends,
+you know. But there was something else he used to say about you.
+I wonder whether I ought to tell you or not!
+
+OCTAVIUS. You know best.
+
+RAMSDEN. It was something about his daughter.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [eagerly] About Ann! Oh, do tell me that, Mr Ramsden.
+
+RAMSDEN. Well, he said he was glad, after all, you were not his
+son, because he thought that someday Annie and you--[Octavius
+blushes vividly]. Well, perhaps I shouldn't have told you. But he
+was in earnest.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Oh, if only I thought I had a chance! You know, Mr
+Ramsden, I don't care about money or about what people call
+position; and I can't bring myself to take an interest in the
+business of struggling for them. Well, Ann has a most exquisite
+nature; but she is so accustomed to be in the thick of that sort
+of thing that she thinks a man's character incomplete if he is
+not ambitious. She knows that if she married me she would have to
+reason herself out of being ashamed of me for not being a big
+success of some kind.
+
+RAMSDEN. [Getting up and planting himself with his back to the
+fireplace] Nonsense, my boy, nonsense! You're too modest. What
+does she know about the real value of men at her age? [More
+seriously] Besides, she's a wonderfully dutiful girl. Her
+father's wish would be sacred to her. Do you know that since she
+grew up to years of discretion, I don't believe she has ever once
+given her own wish as a reason for doing anything or not doing
+it. It's always "Father wishes me to," or "Mother wouldn't like
+it." It's really almost a fault in her. I have often told her she
+must learn to think for herself.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [shaking his head] I couldn't ask her to marry me
+because her father wished it, Mr Ramsden.
+
+RAMSDEN. Well, perhaps not. No: of course not. I see that. No:
+you certainly couldn't. But when you win her on your own merits,
+it will be a great happiness to her to fulfil her father's desire
+as well as her own. Eh? Come! you'll ask her, won't you?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [with sad gaiety] At all events I promise you I shall
+never ask anyone else.
+
+RAMSDEN. Oh, you shan't need to. She'll accept you, my boy--
+although [here be suddenly becomes very serious indeed] you have
+one great drawback.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [anxiously] What drawback is that, Mr Ramsden? I should
+rather say which of my many drawbacks?
+
+RAMSDEN. I'll tell you, Octavius. [He takes from the table a book
+bound in red cloth]. I have in my hand a copy of the most
+infamous, the most scandalous, the most mischievous, the most
+blackguardly book that ever escaped burning at the hands of the
+common hangman. I have not read it: I would not soil my mind with
+such filth; but I have read what the papers say of it. The title
+is quite enough for me. [He reads it]. The Revolutionist's
+Handbook and Pocket Companion by John Tanner, M.I.R.C., Member  of the
+Idle Rich Class.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [smiling] But Jack--
+
+RAMSDEN. [testily] For goodness' sake, don't call him Jack under
+my roof [he throws the book violently down on the table, Then,
+somewhat relieved, he comes past the table to Octavius, and
+addresses him at close quarters with impressive gravity]. Now,
+Octavius, I know that my dead friend was right when he said you
+were a generous lad. I know that this man was your schoolfellow,
+and that you feel bound to stand by him because there was a
+boyish friendship between you. But I ask you to consider the
+altered circumstances. You were treated as a son in my friend's
+house. You lived there; and your friends could not be turned from
+the door. This Tanner was in and out there on your account
+almost from his childhood. He addresses Annie by her Christian
+name as freely as you do. Well, while her father was alive, that
+was her father's business, not mine. This man Tanner was only a
+boy to him: his opinions were something to be laughed at, like a
+man's hat on a child's head. But now Tanner is a grown man and
+Annie a grown woman. And her father is gone. We don't as yet know
+the exact terms of his will; but he often talked it over with me;
+and I have no more doubt than I have that you're sitting there
+that the will appoints me Annie's trustee and guardian.
+[Forcibly] Now I tell you, once for all, I can't and I won't have
+Annie placed in such a position that she must, out of regard for
+you, suffer the intimacy of this fellow Tanner. It's not fair:
+it's not right: it's not kind. What are you going to do about it?
+
+OCTAVIUS. But Ann herself has told Jack that whatever his
+opinions are, he will always be welcome because he knew her dear
+father.
+
+RAMSDEN. [out of patience] That girl's mad about her duty to her
+parents. [He starts off like a goaded ox in the direction of John
+Bright, in whose expression there is no sympathy for him. As he
+speaks, he fumes down to Herbert Spencer, who receives him still
+more coldly] Excuse me, Octavius; but there are limits to social
+toleration. You know that I am not a bigoted or prejudiced man.
+You know that I am plain Roebuck Ramsden when other men who have
+done less have got handles to their names, because I have stood
+for equality and liberty of conscience while they were truckling
+to the Church and to the aristocracy. Whitefield and I lost
+chance after chance through our advanced opinions. But I draw the
+line at Anarchism and Free Love and that sort of thing. If I am
+to be Annie's guardian, she will have to learn that she has a
+duty to me. I won't have it: I will not have it. She must forbid
+John Tanner the house; and so must you.
+
+The parlormaid returns.
+
+OCTAVIUS. But--
+
+RAMSDEN. [calling his attention to the servant] Ssh! Well?
+
+THE MAID. Mr Tanner wishes to see you, sir.
+
+RAMSDEN. Mr Tanner!
+
+OCTAVIUS. Jack!
+
+RAMSDEN. How dare Mr Tanner call on me! Say I cannot see him.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [hurt] I am sorry you are turning my friend from your
+door like that.
+
+THE MAID. [calmly] He's not at the door, sir. He's upstairs in
+the drawingroom with Miss Ramsden. He came with Mrs Whitefield
+and Miss Ann and Miss Robinson, sir.
+
+Ramsden's feelings are beyond words.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [grinning] That's very like Jack, Mr Ramsden. You must
+see him, even if it's only to turn him out.
+
+RAMSDEN. [hammering out his words with suppressed fury] Go
+upstairs and ask Mr Tanner to be good enough to step down here.
+[The parlormaid goes out; and Ramsden returns to the fireplace,
+as to a fortified position]. I must say that of all the
+confounded pieces of impertinence--well, if these are Anarchist
+manners I hope you like them. And Annie with him! Annie! A-- [he
+chokes].
+
+OCTAVIUS. Yes: that's what surprises me. He's so desperately
+afraid of Ann. There must be something the matter.
+
+Mr John Tanner suddenly opens the door and enters. He is too
+young to be described simply as a big man with a beard. But it is
+already plain that middle life will find him in that category. He
+has still some of the slimness of youth; but youthfulness is not
+the effect he aims at: his frock coat would befit a prime
+minister; and a certain high chested carriage of the shoulders, a
+lofty pose of the head, and the Olympian majesty with which a
+mane, or rather a huge wisp, of hazel colored hair is thrown back
+from an imposing brow, suggest Jupiter rather than Apollo. He is
+prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark the
+snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the
+thirty-secondth of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad.
+He is carefully dressed, not from the vanity that cannot resist
+finery, but from a sense of the importance of everything he does
+which leads him to make as much of paying a call as other men do
+of getting married or laying a foundation stone. A sensitive,
+susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a megalomaniac, who would
+be lost without a sense of humor.
+
+Just at present the sense of humor is in abeyance. To say that he
+is excited is nothing: all his moods are phases of excitement. He
+is now in the panic-stricken phase; and he walks straight up to
+Ramsden as if with the fixed intention of shooting him on his own
+hearthrug. But what he pulls from his breast pocket is not a
+pistol, but a foolscap document which he thrusts under the
+indignant nose of Ramsden as he exclaims--
+
+TANNER. Ramsden: do you know what that is?
+
+RAMSDEN. [loftily] No, Sir.
+
+TANNER. It's a copy of Whitefield's will. Ann got it this
+morning.
+
+RAMSDEN. When you say Ann, you mean, I presume, Miss Whitefield.
+
+TANNER. I mean our Ann, your Ann, Tavy's Ann, and now, Heaven
+help me, my Ann!
+
+OCTAVIUS. [rising, very pale] What do you mean?
+
+TANNER. Mean! [He holds up the will]. Do you know who is
+appointed Ann's guardian by this will?
+
+RAMSDEN. [coolly] I believe I am.
+
+TANNER. You! You and I, man. I! I!! I!!! Both of us! [He flings
+the will down on the writing table].
+
+RAMSDEN. You! Impossible.
+
+TANNER. It's only too hideously true. [He throws himself into
+Octavius's chair]. Ramsden: get me out of it somehow. You don't
+know Ann as well as I do. She'll commit every crime a respectable
+woman can; and she'll justify every one of them by saying that it
+was the wish of her guardians. She'll put everything on us; and
+we shall have no more control over her than a couple of mice over
+a cat.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Jack: I wish you wouldn't talk like that about Ann.
+
+TANNER. This chap's in love with her: that's another
+complication. Well, she'll either jilt him and say I didn't
+approve of him, or marry him and say you ordered her to. I tell
+you, this is the most staggering blow that has ever fallen on a
+man of my age and temperament.
+
+RAMSDEN. Let me see that will, sir. [He goes to the writing table
+and picks it up]. I cannot believe that my old friend Whitefield
+would have shown such a want of confidence in me as to associate
+me with--  [His countenance falls as he reads].
+
+TANNER. It's all my own doing: that's the horrible irony of it.
+He told me one day that you were to be Ann's guardian; and like a
+fool I began arguing with him about the folly of leaving a young
+woman under the control of an old man with obsolete ideas.
+
+RAMSDEN. [stupended] My ideas obsolete!!!!!
+
+TANNER. Totally. I had just finished an essay called Down with
+Government by the Greyhaired; and I was full of arguments and
+illustrations. I said the proper thing was to combine the
+experience of an old hand with the vitality of a young one. Hang
+me if he didn't take me at my word and alter his will--it's
+dated only a fortnight after that conversation--appointing me as
+joint guardian with you!
+
+RAMSDEN. [pale and determined] I shall refuse to act.
+
+TANNER. What's the good of that? I've been refusing all the way
+from Richmond; but Ann keeps on saying that of course she's only
+an orphan; and that she can't expect the people who were glad to
+come to the house in her father's time to trouble much about her
+now. That's the latest game. An orphan! It's like hearing an
+ironclad talk about being at the mercy of the winds and waves.
+
+OCTAVIUS. This is not fair, Jack. She is an orphan. And you ought
+to stand by her.
+
+TANNER. Stand by her! What danger is she in? She has the law on
+her side; she has popular sentiment on her side; she has plenty
+of money and no conscience. All she wants with me is to load up
+all her moral responsibilities on me, and do as she likes at the
+expense of my character. I can't control her; and she can
+compromise me as much as she likes. I might as well be her
+husband.
+
+RAMSDEN. You can refuse to accept the guardianship. I shall
+certainly refuse to hold it jointly with you.
+
+TANNER. Yes; and what will she say to that? what does she say
+to it? Just that her father's wishes are sacred to her, and that
+she shall always look up to me as her guardian whether I care to
+face the responsibility or not. Refuse! You might as well refuse
+to accept the embraces of a boa constrictor when once it gets
+round your neck.
+
+OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is not kind to me, Jack.
+
+TANNER. [rising and going to Octavius to console him, but still
+lamenting] If he wanted a young guardian, why didn't he appoint
+Tavy?
+
+RAMSDEN. Ah! why indeed?
+
+OCTAVIUS. I will tell you. He sounded me about it; but I refused
+the trust because I loved her. I had no right to let myself be
+forced on her as a guardian by her father. He spoke to her about
+it; and she said I was right. You know I love her, Mr Ramsden;
+and Jack knows it too. If Jack loved a woman, I would not compare
+her to a boa constrictor in his presence, however much I might
+dislike her [he sits down between the busts and turns his face to
+the wall].
+
+RAMSDEN. I do not believe that Whitefield was in his right senses
+when he made that will. You have admitted that he made it under
+your influence.
+
+TANNER. You ought to be pretty well obliged to me for my
+influence. He leaves you two thousand five hundred for your
+trouble. He leaves Tavy a dowry for his sister and five thousand
+for himself.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [his tears flowing afresh] Oh, I can't take it. He was
+too good to us.
+
+TANNER. You won't get it, my boy, if Ramsden upsets the will.
+
+RAMSDEN. Ha! I see. You have got me in a cleft stick.
+
+TANNER. He leaves me nothing but the charge of Ann's morals, on
+the ground that I have already more money than is good for me.
+That shows that he had his wits about him, doesn't it?
+
+RAMSDEN. [grimly] I admit that.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [rising and coming from his refuge by the wall] Mr
+Ramsden: I think you are prejudiced against Jack. He is a man of
+honor, and incapable of abusing--
+
+TANNER. Don't, Tavy: you'll make me ill. I am not a man of honor:
+I am a man struck down by a dead hand. Tavy: you must marry her
+after all and take her off my hands. And I had set my heart on
+saving you from her!
+
+OCTAVIUS. Oh, Jack, you talk of saving me from my highest
+happiness.
+
+TANNER. Yes, a lifetime of happiness. If it were only the first
+half hour's happiness, Tavy, I would buy it for you with my last
+penny. But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it:
+it would be hell on earth.
+
+RAMSDEN. [violently] Stuff, sir. Talk sense; or else go and waste
+someone else's time: I have something better to do than listen to
+your fooleries [he positively kicks his way to his table and
+resumes his seat].
+
+TANNER. You hear him, Tavy! Not an idea in his head later than
+eighteen-sixty. We can't leave Ann with no other guardian to turn
+to.
+
+RAMSDEN. I am proud of your contempt for my character and
+opinions, sir. Your own are set forth in that book, I believe.
+
+TANNER. [eagerly going to the table] What! You've got my book!
+What do you think of it?
+
+RAMSDEN. Do you suppose I would read such a book, sir?
+
+TANNER. Then why did you buy it?
+
+RAMSDEN. I did not buy it, sir. It has been sent me by some
+foolish lady who seems to admire your views. I was about to
+dispose of it when Octavius interrupted me. I shall do so now,
+with your permission. [He throws the book into the waste paper
+basket with such vehemence that Tanner recoils under the
+impression that it is being thrown at his head].
+
+TANNER. You have no more manners than I have myself. However,
+that saves ceremony between us. [He sits down again]. What do you
+intend to do about this will?
+
+OCTAVIUS. May I make a suggestion?
+
+RAMSDEN. Certainly, Octavius.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Aren't we forgetting that Ann herself may have some
+wishes in this matter?
+
+RAMSDEN. I quite intend that Annie's wishes shall be consulted in
+every reasonable way. But she is only a woman, and a young and
+inexperienced woman at that.
+
+TANNER. Ramsden: I begin to pity you.
+
+RAMSDEN. [hotly] I don't want to know how you feel towards me, Mr
+Tanner.
+
+TANNER. Ann will do just exactly what she likes. And what's more,
+she'll force us to advise her to do it; and she'll put the blame
+on us if it turns out badly. So, as Tavy is longing to see her--
+
+OCTAVIUS. [shyly] I am not, Jack.
+
+TANNER. You lie, Tavy: you are. So let's have her down from the
+drawing-room and ask her what she intends us to do. Off with you,
+Tavy, and fetch her. [Tavy turns to go]. And don't be long for
+the strained relations between myself and Ramsden will make the
+interval rather painful [Ramsden compresses his lips, but says
+nothing--].
+
+OCTAVIUS. Never mind him, Mr Ramsden. He's not serious. [He goes
+out].
+
+RAMSDEN [very deliberately] Mr Tanner: you are the most impudent
+person I have ever met.
+
+TANNER. [seriously] I know it, Ramsden. Yet even I cannot wholly
+conquer shame. We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed
+of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our
+relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of
+our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good
+Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in
+an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom instead of keeping a
+carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of two and a
+groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more things
+a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. Why, you're
+ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing you're
+not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it; and
+even that only means that you're ashamed to have heterodox
+opinions. Look at the effect I produce because my fairy godmother
+withheld from me this gift of shame. I have every possible virtue
+that a man can have except--
+
+RAMSDEN. I am glad you think so well of yourself.
+
+TANNER. All you mean by that is that you think I ought to be
+ashamed of talking about my virtues. You don't mean that I
+haven't got them: you know perfectly well that I am as sober and
+honest a citizen as yourself, as truthful personally, and much
+more truthful politically and morally.
+
+RAMSDEN. [touched on his most sensitive point] I deny that. I
+will not allow you or any man to treat me as if I were a mere
+member of the British public. I detest its prejudices; I scorn
+its narrowness; I demand the right to think for myself. You pose
+as an advanced man. Let me tell you that I was an advanced man
+before you were born.
+
+TANNER. I knew it was a long time ago.
+
+RAMSDEN. I am as advanced as ever I was. I defy you to prove that
+I have ever hauled down the flag. I am more advanced than ever I
+was. I grow more advanced every day.
+
+TANNER. More advanced in years, Polonius.
+
+RAMSDEN. Polonius! So you are Hamlet, I suppose.
+
+TANNER. No: I am only the most impudent person you've ever met.
+That's your notion of a thoroughly bad character. When you want
+to give me a piece of your mind, you ask yourself, as a just and
+upright man, what is the worst you can fairly say of me. Thief,
+liar, forger, adulterer, perjurer, glutton, drunkard? Not one of
+these names fit me. You have to fall back on my deficiency in
+shame. Well, I admit it. I even congratulate myself; for if I
+were ashamed of my real self, I should cut as stupid a figure as
+any of the rest of you. Cultivate a little impudence, Ramsden;
+and you will become quite a remarkable man.
+
+RAMSDEN. I have no--
+
+TANNER. You have no desire for that sort of notoriety. Bless you,
+I knew that answer would come as well as I know that a box of
+matches will come out of an automatic machine when I put a penny
+in the slot: you would be ashamed to say anything else.
+
+The crushing retort for which Ramsden has been visibly collecting
+his forces is lost for ever; for at this point Octavius returns
+with Miss Ann Whitefield and her mother; and Ramsden springs up
+and hurries to the door to receive them. Whether Ann is
+good-looking or not depends upon your taste; also and perhaps
+chiefly on your age and sex. To Octavius she is an enchantingly
+beautiful woman, in whose presence the world becomes
+transfigured, and the puny limits of individual consciousness are
+suddenly made infinite by a mystic memory of the whole life of
+the race to its beginnings in the east, or even back to the
+paradise from which it fell. She is to him the reality of
+romance, the leaner good sense of nonsense, the unveiling of his
+eyes, the freeing of his soul, the abolition of time, place and
+circumstance, the etherealization of his blood into rapturous
+rivers of the very water of life itself, the revelation of all
+the mysteries and the sanctification of all the dogmas. To her
+mother she is, to put it as moderately as possible, nothing
+whatever of the kind. Not that Octavius's admiration is in any
+way ridiculous or discreditable. Ann is a well formed creature,
+as far as that goes; and she is perfectly ladylike, graceful, and
+comely, with ensnaring eyes and hair. Besides, instead of making
+herself an eyesore, like her mother, she has devised a mourning
+costume of black and violet silk which does honor to her late
+father and reveals the family tradition of brave unconventionality
+by which Ramsden sets such store.
+
+But all this is beside the point as an explanation of Ann's
+charm. Turn up her nose, give a cast to her eye, replace her
+black and violet confection by the apron and feathers of a flower
+girl, strike all the aitches out of her speech, and Ann would
+still make men dream. Vitality is as common as humanity; but,
+like humanity, it sometimes rises to genius; and Ann is one of
+the vital geniuses. Not at all, if you please, an oversexed
+person: that is a vital defect, not a true excess. She is a
+perfectly respectable, perfectly self-controlled woman, and looks
+it; though her pose is fashionably frank and impulsive. She
+inspires confidence as a person who will do nothing she does not
+mean to do; also some fear, perhaps, as a woman who will probably
+do everything she means to do without taking more account of
+other people than may be necessary and what she calls right. In
+short, what the weaker of her own sex sometimes call a cat.
+
+Nothing can be more decorous than her entry and her reception by
+Ramsden, whom she kisses. The late Mr Whitefield  would be
+gratified almost to impatience by the long faces of the men
+(except Tanner, who is fidgety), the silent handgrasps, the
+sympathetic placing of chairs, the sniffing of the widow, and the
+liquid eye of the daughter, whose heart, apparently, will not let
+her control her tongue to speech. Ramsden and Octavius take the
+two chairs from the wall, and place them for the two ladies; but
+Ann comes to Tanner and takes his chair, which he offers with a
+brusque gesture, subsequently relieving his irritation by sitting
+down on the corner of the writing table with studied indecorum.
+Octavius gives Mrs Whitefield a chair next Ann, and himself takes
+the vacant one which Ramsden has placed under the nose of the
+effigy of Mr Herbert Spencer.
+
+Mrs Whitefield, by the way, is a little woman, whose faded flaxen
+hair looks like straw on an egg. She has an expression of
+muddled shrewdness, a squeak of protest in her voice, and an odd
+air of continually elbowing away some larger person who is
+crushing her into a corner. One guesses her as one of those women
+who are conscious of being treated as silly and negligible, and
+who, without having strength enough to assert themselves
+effectually, at any rate never submit to their fate. There is a
+touch of chivalry in Octavius's scrupulous attention to her,
+even whilst his whole soul is absorbed by Ann.
+
+Ramsden goes solemnly back to his magisterial seat at the writing
+table, ignoring Tanner, and opens the proceedings.
+
+RAMSDEN. I am sorry, Annie, to force business on you at a sad
+time like the present. But your poor dear father's will has
+raised a very serious question. You have read it, I believe?
+
+[Ann assents with a nod and a catch of her breath, too much
+affected to speak].
+
+I must say I am surprised to find Mr Tanner named as joint
+guardian and trustee with myself of you and Rhoda. [A pause. They
+all look portentous; but they have nothing to say. Ramsden, a
+little ruffled by the lack of any response, continues] I don't
+know that I can consent to act under such conditions. Mr Tanner
+has, I understand, some objection also; but I do not profess to
+understand its nature: he will no doubt speak for himself. But we
+are agreed that we can decide nothing until we know your views. I
+am afraid I shall have to ask you to choose between my sole
+guardianship and that of Mr Tanner; for I fear it is impossible
+for us to undertake a joint arrangement.
+
+ANN. [in a low musical voice] Mamma--
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [hastily] Now, Ann, I do beg you not to put it on
+me. I have no opinion on the subject; and if I had, it would
+probably not be attended to. I am quite with whatever you three
+think best.
+
+Tanner turns his head and looks fixedly at Ramsden, who angrily
+refuses to receive this mute communication.
+
+ANN. [resuming in the same gentle voice, ignoring her mother's
+bad taste] Mamma knows that she is not strong enough to bear the
+whole responsibility for me and Rhoda without some help and
+advice. Rhoda must have a guardian; and though I am older, I do
+not think any young unmarried woman should be left quite to her
+own guidance. I hope you agree with me, Granny?
+
+TANNER. [starting] Granny! Do you intend to call your guardians
+Granny?
+
+ANN. Don't be foolish, Jack. Mr Ramsden has always been Grandpapa
+Roebuck to me: I am Granny's Annie; and he is Annie's Granny. I
+christened him so when I first learned to speak.
+
+RAMSDEN. [sarcastically] I hope you are satisfied, Mr Tanner. Go
+on, Annie: I quite agree with you.
+
+ANN. Well, if I am to have a guardian, CAN I set aside anybody
+whom my dear father appointed for me?
+
+RAMSDEN. [biting his lip] You approve of your father's choice,
+then?
+
+ANN. It is not for me to approve or disapprove. I accept it. My
+father loved me and knew best what was good for me.
+
+RAMSDEN. Of course I understand your feeling, Annie. It is what I
+should have expected of you; and it does you credit. But it does
+not settle the question so completely as you think. Let me put a
+case to you. Suppose you were to discover that I had been guilty
+of some disgraceful action--that I was not the man your poor dear
+father took me for. Would you still consider it right that I
+should be Rhoda's guardian?
+
+ANN. I can't imagine you doing anything disgraceful, Granny.
+
+TANNER. [to Ramsden] You haven't done anything of the sort, have
+you?
+
+RAMSDEN. [indignantly] No sir.
+
+MRS. WHITEFIELD. [placidly] Well, then, why suppose it?
+
+ANN. You see, Granny, Mamma would not like me to suppose it.
+
+RAMSDEN. [much perplexed] You are both so full of natural and
+affectionate feeling in these family matters that it is very hard
+to put the situation fairly before you.
+
+TANNER. Besides, my friend, you are not putting the situation
+fairly before them.
+
+RAMSDEN. [sulkily] Put it yourself, then.
+
+TANNER. I will. Ann: Ramsden thinks I am not fit be your
+guardian; and I quite agree with him. He considers that if your
+father had read my book, he wouldn't have appointed me. That book
+is the disgraceful action he has been talking about. He thinks
+it's your duty for Rhoda's sake to ask him to act alone and to
+make me withdraw. Say the word and I will.
+
+ANN. But I haven't read your book, Jack.
+
+TANNER. [diving at the waste-paper basket and fishing the book
+out for her] Then read it at once and decide.
+
+RAMSDEN. If I am to be your guardian, I positively forbid you to
+read that book, Annie. [He smites the table with his fist and
+rises].
+
+ANN. Of course, if you don't wish it. [She puts the book on the
+table].
+
+TANNER. If one guardian is to forbid you to read the other
+guardian's book, how are we to settle it? Suppose I order you to
+read it! What about your duty to me?
+
+ANN. [gently] I am sure you would never purposely force me into a
+painful dilemma, Jack.
+
+RAMSDEN. [irritably] Yes, yes, Annie: this is all very well, and,
+as I said, quite natural and becoming. But you must make a choice
+one way or the other. We are as much in a dilemma as you.
+
+ANN. I feel that I am too young, too inexperienced, to decide. My
+father's wishes are sacred to me.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. If you two men won't carry them out I must say it
+is rather hard that you should put the responsibility on Ann. It
+seems to me that people are always putting things on other people
+in this world.
+
+RAMSDEN.  I am sorry you take it that way.
+
+ANN. [touchingly] Do you refuse to accept me as your ward,
+Granny?
+
+RAMSDEN. No: I never said that. I greatly object to act with Mr
+Tanner: that's all.
+
+MRS. WHITEFIELD. Why? What's the matter with poor Jack?
+
+TANNER. My views are too advanced for him.
+
+RAMSDEN. [indignantly] They are not. I deny it.
+
+ANN. Of course not. What nonsense! Nobody is more advanced than
+Granny. I am sure it is Jack himself who has made all the
+difficulty. Come, Jack! Be kind to me in my sorrow. You don't
+refuse to accept me as your ward, do you?
+
+TANNER. [gloomily] No. I let myself in for it; so I suppose I
+must face it. [He turns away to the bookcase, and stands there,
+moodily studying the titles of the volumes].
+
+ANN. [rising and expanding with subdued but gushing delight] Then
+we are all agreed; and my dear father's will is to be carried
+out. You don't know what a joy that is to me and to my mother!
+[She goes to Ramsden and presses both his hands, saying] And I
+shall have my dear Granny to help and advise me. [She casts a
+glance at Tanner over her shoulder]. And Jack the Giant Killer.
+[She goes past her mother to Octavius]. And Jack's inseparable
+friend Ricky-ticky-tavy [he blushes and looks inexpressibly
+foolish].
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [rising and shaking her widow's weeds straight]
+Now that you are Ann's guardian, Mr Ramsden, I wish you would
+speak to her about her habit of giving people nicknames. They
+can't be expected to like it. [She moves towards the door].
+
+ANN. How can you say such a thing, Mamma! [Glowing with
+affectionate remorse] Oh, I wonder can you be right! Have I been
+inconsiderate? [She turns to Octavius, who is sitting astride
+his chair with his elbows on the back of it. Putting her hand on
+his forehead the turns his face up suddenly]. Do you want to be
+treated like a grown up man? Must I call you Mr Robinson in
+future?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [earnestly] Oh please call me Ricky-ticky--tavy, "Mr
+Robinson" would hurt me cruelly. She laughs and pats his cheek
+with her finger; then comes back to Ramsden]. You know I'm
+beginning to think that Granny is rather a piece of impertinence.
+But I never dreamt of its hurting you.
+
+RAMSDEN. [breezily, as he pats her affectionately on the back] My
+dear Annie, nonsense. I insist on Granny. I won't answer to any
+other name than Annie's Granny.
+
+ANN. [gratefully] You all spoil me, except Jack.
+
+TANNER. [over his shoulder, from the bookcase] I think you ought
+to call me Mr Tanner.
+
+ANN. [gently] No you don't, Jack. That's like the things you say
+on purpose to shock people: those who know you pay no attention
+to them. But, if you like, I'll call you after your famous
+ancestor Don Juan.
+
+RAMSDEN. Don Juan!
+
+ANN. [innocently] Oh, is there any harm in it? I didn't know.
+Then I certainly won't call you that. May I call you Jack until
+I can think of something else?
+
+TANKER. Oh, for Heaven's sake don't try to invent anything worse.
+I capitulate. I consent to Jack. I embrace Jack. Here endeth my
+first and last attempt to assert my authority.
+
+ANN. You see, Mamma, they all really like to have pet names.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Well, I think you might at least drop them until
+we are out of mourning.
+
+ANN. [reproachfully, stricken to the soul] Oh, how could you
+remind me, mother? [She hastily leaves the room to conceal her
+emotion].
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Of course. My fault as usual! [She follows Ann].
+
+TANNER. [coming from the bockcase] Ramsden: we're beaten--
+smashed--nonentitized, like her mother.
+
+RAMSDEN. Stuff, Sir. [He follows Mrs Whitefield out of the room].
+
+TANNER. [left alone with Octavius, stares whimsically at him]
+Tavy: do you want to count for something in the world?
+
+OCTAVIUS. I want to count for something as a poet: I want to
+write a great play.
+
+TANNER. With Ann as the heroine?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Yes: I confess it.
+
+TANNER. Take care, Tavy. The play with Ann as the heroine is all
+right; but if you're not very careful, by Heaven she'll marry
+you.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [sighing] No such luck, Jack!
+
+TANNER. Why, man, your head is in the lioness's mouth: you are
+half swallowed already--in three bites--Bite One, Ricky; Bite
+Two, Ticky; Bite Three, Tavy; and down you go.
+
+OCTAVIUS. She is the same to everybody, Jack: you know her ways.
+
+TANNER. Yes: she breaks everybody's back with the stroke of her
+paw; but the question is, which of us will she eat? My own
+opinion is that she means to eat you.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [rising, pettishly] It's horrible to talk like that
+about her when she is upstairs crying for her father. But I do so
+want her to eat me that I can bear your brutalities because they
+give me hope.
+
+TANNER. Tavy; that's the devilish side of a woman's fascination:
+she makes you will your own destruction.
+
+OCTAVIUS. But it's not destruction: it's fulfilment.
+
+TANNER. Yes, of HER purpose; and that purpose is neither her
+happiness nor yours, but Nature's. Vitality in a woman is a blind
+fury of creation. She sacrifices herself to it: do you think she
+will hesitate to sacrifice you?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Why, it is just because she is self-sacrificing that
+she will not sacrifice those she loves.
+
+TANNER. That is the profoundest of mistakes, Tavy. It is the
+self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most recklessly.
+Because they are unselfish, they are kind in little things.
+Because they have a purpose which is not their own purpose, but
+that of the whole universe, a man is nothing to them but an
+instrument of that purpose.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Don't be ungenerous, Jack. They take the tenderest care
+of us.
+
+TANNER. Yes, as a soldier takes care of his rifle or a musician
+of his violin. But do they allow us any purpose or freedom of our
+own? Will they lend us to one another? Can the strongest man
+escape from them when once he is appropriated? They tremble when
+we are in danger, and weep when we die; but the tears are not for
+us, but for a father wasted, a son's breeding thrown away. They
+accuse us of treating them as a mere means to our pleasure; but
+how can so feeble and transient a folly as a man's selfish
+pleasure enslave a woman as the whole purpose of Nature embodied
+in a woman can enslave a man?
+
+OCTAVIUS. What matter, if the slavery makes us happy?
+
+TANNER. No matter at all if you have no purpose of your own, and
+are, like most men, a mere breadwinner. But you, Tavy, are an
+artist: that is, you have a purpose as absorbing and as
+unscrupulous as a woman's purpose.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Not unscrupulous.
+
+TANNER. Quite unscrupulous. The true artist will let his wife
+starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his
+living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To
+women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate
+relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of
+convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing
+that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies,
+to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and
+dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women
+that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really
+means them to do it for his. He steals the mother's milk and
+blackens it to make printer's ink to scoff at her and glorify
+ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of
+childbearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness and
+fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage
+began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. But he
+is worse: he is a child-robber, a bloodsucker, a hypocrite and a
+cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the
+sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a
+finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a
+profounder philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist's work is
+to show us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but
+this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such
+knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new
+men. In the rage of that creation he is as ruthless as the woman,
+as dangerous to her as she to him, and as horribly fascinating.
+Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and
+remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother
+woman. Which shall use up the other? that is the issue between
+them. And it is all the deadlier because, in your romanticist
+cant, they love one another.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Even if it were so--and I don't admit it for a moment--
+it is out of the deadliest struggles that we get the noblest
+characters.
+
+TANNER. Remember that the next time you meet a grizzly bear or a
+Bengal tiger, Tavy.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I meant where there is love, Jack.
+
+TANNER. Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no love sincerer
+than the love of food. I think Ann loves you that way: she patted
+your cheek as if it were a nicely underdone chop.
+
+OCTAVIUS. You know, Jack, I should have to run away from you if I
+did not make it a fixed rule not to mind anything you say. You
+come out with perfectly revolting things sometimes.
+
+Ramsden returns, followed by Ann. They come in quickly, with
+their former leisurely air of decorous grief changed to one of
+genuine concern, and, on Ramsden's part, of worry. He comes
+between the two men, intending to address Octavius, but pulls
+himself up abruptly as he sees Tanner.
+
+RAMSDEN. I hardly expected to find you still here, Mr Tanner.
+
+TANNER. Am I in the way? Good morning, fellow guardian [he goes
+towards the door].
+
+ANN. Stop, Jack. Granny: he must know, sooner or later.
+
+RAMSDEN. Octavius: I have a very serious piece of news for you.
+It is of the most private and delicate nature--of the most
+painful nature too, I am sorry to say. Do you wish Mr Tanner to
+be present whilst I explain?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [turning pale] I have no secrets from Jack.
+
+RAMSDEN. Before you decide that finally, let me say that the news
+concerns your sister, and that it is terrible news.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Violet! What has happened? Is she--dead?
+
+RAMSDEN. I am not sure that it is not even worse than that.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Is she badly hurt? Has there been an accident?
+
+RAMSDEN. No: nothing of that sort.
+
+TANNER. Ann: will you have the common humanity to tell us what
+the matter is?
+
+ANN. [half whispering] I can't. Violet has done something
+dreadful. We shall have to get her away somewhere. [She flutters
+to the writing table and sits in Ramsden's chair, leaving the
+three men to fight it out between them].
+
+OCTAVIUS. [enlightened] Is that what you meant, Mr Ramsden?
+
+RAMSDEN. Yes. [Octavius sinks upon a chair, crushed]. I am afraid
+there is no doubt that Violet did not really go to Eastbourne
+three weeks ago when we thought she was with the Parry
+Whitefields. And she called on a strange doctor yesterday with a
+wedding ring on her finger. Mrs. Parry Whitefield met her there
+by chance; and so the whole thing came out.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [rising with his fists clenched] Who is the scoundrel?
+
+ANN. She won't tell us.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [collapsing upon his chair again] What a frightful
+thing!
+
+TANNER. [with angry sarcasm] Dreadful. Appalling.  Worse than
+death, as Ramsden says. [He comes to Octavius]. What would you
+not give, Tavy, to turn it into a railway accident, with all her
+bones broken or something equally respectable and deserving of
+sympathy?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Don't be brutal, Jack.
+
+TANNER. Brutal! Good Heavens, man, what are you crying for? Here
+is a woman whom we all supposed to be making bad water color
+sketches, practising Grieg and Brahms, gadding about to concerts
+and parties, wasting her life and her money. We suddenly learn
+that she has turned from these sillinesses to the fulfilment of
+her highest purpose and greatest function--to increase, multiply
+and replenish the earth. And instead of admiring her courage and
+rejoicing in her instinct; instead of crowning the completed
+womanhood and raising the triumphal strain of "Unto us a child is
+born: unto us a son is given," here you are--you who have been as
+merry as Brigs in your mourning for the dead--all pulling long
+faces and looking as ashamed and disgraced as if the girl had
+committed the vilest of crimes.
+
+RAMSDEN. [roaring with rage] I will not have these abominations
+uttered in my house [he smites the writing table with his fist].
+
+TANNER. Look here: if you insult me again I'll take you at your
+word and leave your house. Ann: where is Violet now?
+
+ANN. Why? Are you going to her?
+
+TANNER. Of course I am going to her. She wants help; she wants
+money; she wants respect and congratulation. She wants every
+chance for her child. She does not seem likely to get it from
+you: she shall from me. Where is she?
+
+ANN. Don't be so headstrong, Jack. She's upstairs.
+
+TANNER. What! Under Ramsden's sacred roof! Go and do your
+miserable duty, Ramsden. Hunt her out into the street. Cleanse
+your threshold from her contamination. Vindicate the purity of
+your English home. I'll go for a cab,
+
+ANN. [alarmed] Oh, Granny, you mustn't do that.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [broken-heartedly, rising] I'll take her away, Mr
+Ramsden. She had no right to come to your house.
+
+RAMSDEN. [indignantly] But I am only too anxious to help her.
+[turning on Tanner] How dare you, sir, impute such monstrous
+intentions to me? I protest against it. I am ready to put down my
+last penny to save her from being driven to run to you for
+protection.
+
+TANNER. [subsiding] It's all right, then. He's not going to act
+up to his principles. It's agreed that we all stand by Violet.
+
+OCTAVIUS. But who is the man? He can make reparation by marrying
+her; and he shall, or he shall answer for it to me.
+
+RAMSDEN. He shall, Octavius. There you speak like a man.
+
+TANNER. Then you don't think him a scoundrel, after all?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Not a scoundrel! He is a heartless scoundrel.
+
+RAMSDEN. A damned scoundrel. I beg your pardon, Annie; but I can
+say no less.
+
+TANNER. So we are to marry your sister to a damned scoundrel by
+way of reforming her character! On my soul, I think you are all
+mad.
+
+ANN. Don't be absurd, Jack. Of course you are quite right, Tavy;
+but we don't know who he is: Violet won't tell us.
+
+TANNER. What on earth does it matter who he is? He's done his
+part; and Violet must do the rest.
+
+RAMSDEN. [beside himself] Stuff! lunacy! There is a rascal in our
+midst, a libertine, a villain worse than a murderer; and we are
+not to learn who he is! In our ignorance we are to shake him by
+the hand; to introduce him into our homes; to trust our daughters
+with him; to--to--
+
+ANN. [coaxingly] There, Granny, don't talk so loud. It's most
+shocking: we must all admit that; but if Violet won't tell us,
+what can we do? Nothing. Simply nothing.
+
+RAMSDEN. Hmph! I'm not so sure of that. If any man has paid
+Violet any special attention, we can easily find that out. If
+there is any man of notoriously loose principles among us--
+
+TANNER. Ahem!
+
+RAMSDEN. [raising his voice] Yes sir, I repeat, if there is any
+man of notoriously loose principles among us--
+
+TANNER. Or any man notoriously lacking in self-control.
+
+RAMSDEN. [aghast] Do you dare to suggest that I am capable of
+such an act?
+
+TANNER. My dear Ramsden, this is an act of which every man is
+capable. That is what comes of getting at cross purposes with
+Nature. The suspicion you have just flung at me clings to us all.
+It's a sort of mud that sticks to the judge's ermine or the
+cardinal's robe as fast as to the rags of the tramp. Come, Tavy:
+don't look so bewildered: it might have been me: it might have
+been Ramsden; just as it might have been anybody. If it had, what
+could we do but lie and protest as Ramsden is going to protest.
+
+RAMSDEN. [choking]] I--I--I--
+
+TANNER. Guilt itself could not stammer more confusedly, And yet
+you know perfectly well he's innocent, Tavy.
+
+RAMSDEN. [exhausted] I am glad you admit that, sir. I admit,
+myself, that there is an element of truth in what you say,
+grossly as you may distort it to gratify your malicious humor. I
+hope, Octavius, no suspicion of me is possible in your mind.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Of you! No, not for a moment.
+
+TANNER. [drily] I think he suspects me just a little.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Jack: you couldn't--you wouldn't--
+
+TANNER. Why not?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [appalled] Why not!
+
+TANNER. Oh, well, I'll tell you why not. First, you would feel
+bound to quarrel with me. Second, Violet doesn't like me. Third,
+if I had the honor of being the father of Violet's child, I
+should boast of it instead of denying it. So be easy: our
+Friendship is not in danger.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I should have put away the suspicion with horror if
+only you would think and feel naturally about it. I beg your
+pardon.
+
+TANNER. MY pardon! nonsense! And now let's sit down and have a
+family council. [He sits down. The rest follow his example, more
+or less under protest]. Violet is going to do the State a
+service; consequently she must be packed abroad like a criminal
+until it's over. What's happening upstairs?
+
+ANN. Violet is in the housekeeper's room--by herself, of course.
+
+TANNER. Why not in the drawingroom?
+
+ANN. Don't be absurd, Jack. Miss Ramsden is in the drawingroom
+with my mother, considering what to do.
+
+TANNER. Oh! the housekeeper's room is the penitentiary, I
+suppose; and the prisoner is waiting to be brought before her
+judges. The old cats!
+
+ANN. Oh, Jack!
+
+RAMSDEN. You are at present a guest beneath the roof of one of
+the old cats, sir. My sister is the mistress of this house.
+
+TANNER. She would put me in the housekeeper's room, too, if she
+dared, Ramsden. However, I withdraw cats. Cats would have more
+sense. Ann: as your guardian, I order you to go to Violet at once
+and be particularly kind to her.
+
+ANN. I have seen her, Jack. And I am sorry to say I am afraid she
+is going to be rather obstinate about going abroad. I think Tavy
+ought to speak to her about it.
+
+OCTAVIUS. How can I speak to her about such a thing [he breaks
+down]?
+
+ANN. Don't break down, Ricky. Try to bear it for all our sakes.
+
+RAMSDEN. Life is not all plays and poems, Octavius. Come! face it
+like a man.
+
+TANNER. [chafing again] Poor dear brother! Poor dear friends of
+the family! Poor dear Tabbies and Grimalkins. Poor dear everybody
+except the woman who is going to risk her life to create another
+life! Tavy: don't you be a selfish ass. Away with you and talk to
+Violet; and bring her down here if she cares to come. [Octavius
+rises]. Tell her we'll stand by her.
+
+RAMSDEN. [rising] No, sir--
+
+TANNER. [rising also and interrupting him] Oh, we understand:
+it's against your conscience; but still you'll do it.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I assure you all, on my word, I never meant to be
+selfish. It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes
+earnestly to do right.
+
+TANNER. My dear Tavy, your pious English habit of regarding the
+world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your
+character in, occasionally leads you to think about your own
+confounded principles when you should be thinking about other
+people's necessities. The need of the present hour is a happy
+mother and a healthy baby. Bend your energies on that; and you
+will see your way clearly enough.
+
+Octavius, much perplexed, goes out.
+
+RAMSDEN. [facing Tanner impressively] And Morality, sir? What is
+to become of that?
+
+TANNER. Meaning a weeping Magdalen and an innocent child branded
+with her shame. Not in our circle, thank you. Morality can go to
+its father the devil.
+
+RAMSDEN. I thought so, sir. Morality sent to the devil to please
+our libertines, male and female. That is to be the future of
+England, is it?
+
+TANNER. Oh, England will survive your disapproval. Meanwhile, I
+understand that you agree with me as to the practical course we
+are to take?
+
+RAMSDEN. Not in your spirit sir. Not for your reasons.
+
+TANNER. You can explain that if anybody calls you to account,
+here or hereafter. [He turns away, and plants himself in front of
+Mr Herbert Spencer, at whom he stares gloomily].
+
+ANN. [rising and coming to Ramsden] Granny: hadn't you better go
+up to the drawingroom and tell them what we intend to do?
+
+RAMSDEN. [looking pointedly at Tanner] I hardly like to leave you
+alone with this gentleman. Will you not come with me?
+
+ANN. Miss Ramsden would not like to speak about it before me,
+Granny. I ought not to be present.
+
+RAMSDEN. You are right: I should have thought of that. You are a
+good girl, Annie.
+
+He pats her on the shoulder. She looks up at him with beaming
+eyes and he goes out, much moved. Having disposed of him, she
+looks at Tanner. His back being turned to her, she gives a
+moment's attention to her personal appearance, then softly goes
+to him and speaks almost into his ear.
+
+ANN. Jack [he turns with a start]: are you glad that you are my
+guardian? You don't mind being made responsible for me, I hope.
+
+TANNER. The latest addition to your collection of scapegoats,
+eh?
+
+ANN. Oh, that stupid old joke of yours about me! Do please drop
+it. Why do you say things that you know must pain me? I do my
+best to please you, Jack: I suppose I may tell you so now that
+you are my guardian. You will make me so unhappy if you refuse to
+be friends with me.
+
+TANNER. [studying her as gloomily as he studied the dust] You
+need not go begging for my regard. How unreal our moral judgments
+are! You seem to me to have absolutely no conscience--only
+hypocrisy; and you can't see the difference--yet there is a sort
+of fascination about you. I always attend to you, somehow. I
+should miss you if I lost you.
+
+ANN. [tranquilly slipping her arm into his and walking about with
+him] But isn't that only natural, Jack? We have known each other
+since we were children. Do you remember?
+
+TANNER. [abruptly breaking loose] Stop! I remember EVERYTHING.
+
+ANN. Oh, I daresay we were often very silly; but--
+
+TANNER. I won't have it, Ann. I am no more that schoolboy now
+than I am the dotard of ninety I shall grow into if I live long
+enough. It is over: let me forget it.
+
+ANN. Wasn't it a happy time? [She attempts to take his arm
+again].
+
+TANNER. Sit down and behave yourself. [He makes her sit down in
+the chair next the writing table]. No doubt it was a happy time
+for you. You were a good girl and never compromised yourself. And
+yet the wickedest child that ever was slapped could hardly have
+had a better time. I can understand the success with which you
+bullied the other girls: your virtue imposed on them. But tell me
+this: did you ever know a good boy?
+
+ANN. Of course. All boys are foolish sometimes; but Tavy was
+always a really good boy.
+
+TANNER. [struck by this] Yes: you're right. For some reason you
+never tempted Tavy.
+
+ANN. Tempted! Jack!
+
+TANNER. Yes, my dear Lady Mephistopheles, tempted. You were
+insatiably curious as to what a boy might be capable of, and
+diabolically clever at getting through his guard and surprising
+his inmost secrets.
+
+ANN. What nonsense! All because you used to tell me long stories
+of the wicked things you had done--silly boys tricks! And you
+call such things inmost secrets: Boys' secrets are just like
+men's; and you know what they are!
+
+TANNER. [obstinately] No I don't. What are they, pray?
+
+ANN. Why, the things they tell everybody, of course.
+
+TANNER. Now I swear I told you things I told no one else. You
+lured me into a compact by which we were to have no secrets from
+one another. We were to tell one another everything, I didn't
+notice that you never told me anything.
+
+ANN. You didn't want to talk about me, Jack. You wanted to talk
+about yourself.
+
+TANNER. Ah, true, horribly true. But what a devil of a child you
+must have been to know that weakness and to play on it for the
+satisfaction of your own curiosity! I wanted to brag to you, to
+make myself interesting. And I found myself doing all sorts of
+mischievous things simply to have something to tell you about. I
+fought with boys I didn't hate; I lied about things I might just
+as well have told the truth about; I stole things I didn't want;
+I kissed little girls I didn't care for. It was all bravado:
+passionless and therefore unreal.
+
+ANN. I never told of you, Jack.
+
+TANNER. No; but if you had wanted to stop me you would have told
+of me. You wanted me to go on.
+
+ANN. [flashing out] Oh, that's not true: it's NOT true, Jack. I
+never wanted you to do those dull, disappointing, brutal, stupid,
+vulgar things. I always hoped that it would be something really
+heroic at last. [Recovering herself] Excuse me, Jack; but the
+things you did were never a bit like the things I wanted you to
+do. They often gave me great uneasiness; but I could not tell on
+you and get you into trouble. And you were only a boy. I knew you
+would grow out of them. Perhaps I was wrong.
+
+TANNER. [sardonically] Do not give way to remorse, Ann. At least
+nineteen twentieths of the exploits I confessed to you were pure
+lies. I soon noticed that you didn't like the true stories.
+
+ANN. Of course I knew that some of the things couldn't have
+happened. But--
+
+TANNER. You are going to remind me that some of the most
+disgraceful ones did.
+
+ANN. [fondly, to his great terror] I don't want to remind you of
+anything. But I knew the people they happened to, and heard about
+them.
+
+TANNER. Yes; but even the true stories were touched up for
+telling. A sensitive boy's humiliations may be very good fun for
+ordinary thickskinned grown-ups; but to the boy himself they are
+so acute, so ignominious, that he cannot confess them--cannot but
+deny them passionately. However, perhaps it was as well for me
+that I romanced a bit; for, on the one occasion when I told you
+the truth, you threatened to tell of me.
+
+ANN. Oh, never. Never once.
+
+TANNER. Yes, you did. Do you remember a dark-eyed girl named
+Rachel Rosetree? [Ann's brows contract for an instant
+involuntarily]. I got up a love affair with her; and we met one
+night in the garden and walked about very uncomfortably with our
+arms round one another, and kissed at parting, and were most
+conscientiously romantic. If that love affair had gone on, it
+would have bored me to death; but it didn't go on; for the next
+thing that happened was that Rachel cut me because she found out
+that I had told you. How did she find it out? From you. You went
+to her and held the guilty secret over her head, leading her a
+life of abject terror and humiliation by threatening to tell on
+her.
+
+ANN. And a very good thing for her, too. It was my duty to stop
+her misconduct; and she is thankful to me for it now.
+
+TANNER. Is she?
+
+ANN. She ought to be, at all events.
+
+TANNER. It was not your duty to stop my misconduct, I suppose.
+
+ANN. I did stop it by stopping her.
+
+TANNER. Are you sure of that? You stopped my telling you about
+my adventures; but how do you know that you stopped the
+adventures?
+
+ANN. Do you mean to say that you went on in the same way with
+other girls?
+
+TANNER. No. I had enough of that sort of romantic tomfoolery
+with Rachel.
+
+ANN. [unconvinced] Then why did you break off our confidences and
+become quite strange to me?
+
+TANNER. [enigmatically] It happened just then that I got
+something that I wanted to keep all to myself instead of sharing
+it with you.
+
+ANN. I am sure I shouldn't have asked for any of it if you had
+grudged it.
+
+TANNER. It wasn't a box of sweets, Ann. It was something you'd
+never have let me call my own.
+
+ANN. [incredulously] What?
+
+TANNER. My soul.
+
+ANN. Oh, do be sensible, Jack. You know you're talking nonsense.
+
+TANNER. The most solemn earnest, Ann. You didn't notice at that
+time that you were getting a soul too. But you were. It was not
+for nothing that you suddenly found you had a moral duty to
+chastise and reform Rachel. Up to that time you had traded pretty
+extensively in being a good child; but you had never set up a
+sense of duty to others. Well, I set one up too. Up to that time
+I had played the boy buccaneer with no more conscience than a fox
+in a poultry farm. But now I began to have scruples, to feel
+obligations, to find that veracity and honor were no longer
+goody-goody expressions in the mouths of grown up people, but
+compelling principles in myself.
+
+ANN. [quietly] Yes, I suppose you're right. You were beginning to
+be a man, and I to be a woman.
+
+TANNER. Are you sure it was not that we were beginning to be
+something more? What does the beginning of manhood and womanhood
+mean in most people's mouths? You know: it means the beginning of
+love. But love began long before that for me. Love played its
+part in the earliest dreams and follies and romances I can
+remember--may I say the earliest follies and romances we can
+remember?--though we did not understand it at the time. No: the
+change that came to me was the birth in me of moral passion; and
+I declare that according to my experience moral passion is the
+only real passion.
+
+ANN. All passions ought to be moral, Jack.
+
+TANNER. Ought! Do you think that anything is strong enough to
+impose oughts on a passion except a stronger passion still?
+
+ANN. Our moral sense controls passion, Jack. Don't be stupid.
+
+TANNER. Our moral sense! And is that not a passion? Is the devil
+to have all the passions as well as all the good times? If it
+were not a passion--if it were not the mightiest of the passions,
+all the other passions would sweep it away like a leaf before a
+hurricane. It is the birth of that passion that turns a child
+into a man.
+
+ANN. There are other passions, Jack. Very strong ones.
+
+TANNER. All the other passions were in me before; but they were
+idle and aimless--mere childish greedinesses and cruelties,
+curiosities and fancies, habits and superstitions, grotesque and
+ridiculous to the mature intelligence. When they suddenly began
+to shine like newly lit flames it was by no light of their own,
+but by the radiance of the dawning moral passion. That passion
+dignified them, gave them conscience and meaning, found them a
+mob of appetites and organized them into an army of purposes and
+principles. My soul was born of that passion.
+
+ANN. I noticed that you got more sense. You were a dreadfully
+destructive boy before that.
+
+TANNER. Destructive! Stuff! I was only mischievous.
+
+ANN. Oh Jack, you were very destructive. You ruined all the young
+fir trees by chopping off their leaders with a wooden sword. You
+broke all the cucumber frames with your catapult. You set fire to
+the common: the police arrested Tavy for it because he ran away
+when he couldn't stop you. You--
+
+TANNER. Pooh! pooh! pooh! these were battles, bombardments,
+stratagems to save our scalps from the red Indians. You have no
+imagination, Ann. I am ten times more destructive now than I was
+then. The moral passion has taken my destructiveness in hand and
+directed it to moral ends. I have become a reformer, and, like
+all reformers, an iconoclast. I no longer break cucumber frames
+and burn gorse bushes: I shatter creeds and demolish idols.
+
+ANN. [bored] I am afraid I am too feminine to see any sense in
+destruction. Destruction can only destroy.
+
+TANNER. Yes. That is why it is so useful. Construction cumbers
+the ground with institutions made by busybodies. Destruction
+clears it and gives us breathing space and liberty.
+
+ANN. It's no use, Jack. No woman will agree with you there.
+
+TANNER. That's because you confuse construction and destruction
+with creation and murder. They're quite different: I adore
+creation and abhor murder. Yes: I adore it in tree and flower,
+in bird and beast, even in you. [A flush of interest and delight
+suddenly clears the growing perplexity and boredom from her
+face]. It was the creative instinct that led you to attach me to
+you by bonds that have left their mark on me to this day. Yes,
+Ann: the old childish compact between us was an unconscious love
+compact.
+
+ANN. Jack!
+
+TANNER. Oh, don't be alarmed--
+
+ANN. I am not alarmed.
+
+TANNER. [whimsically] Then you ought to be: where are your
+principles?
+
+ANN. Jack: are you serious or are you not?
+
+TANNER. Do you mean about the moral passion?
+
+ANN. No, no; the other one. [Confused] Oh! you are so silly; one
+never knows how to take you.
+
+TANNER. You must take me quite seriously. I am your guardian; and
+it is my duty to improve your mind.
+
+ANN. The love compact is over, then, is it? I suppose you grew
+tired of me?
+
+TANNER. No; but the moral passion made our childish relations
+impossible. A jealous sense of my new individuality arose in me.
+
+ANN. You hated to be treated as a boy any longer. Poor Jack!
+
+TANNER. Yes, because to be treated as a boy was to be taken on
+the old footing. I had become a new person; and those who knew
+the old person laughed at me. The only man who behaved sensibly
+was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me,
+whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and
+expected them to fit me.
+
+ANN. You became frightfully self-conscious.
+
+TANNER. When you go to heaven, Ann, you will be frightfully
+conscious of your wings for the first year or so. When you meet
+your relatives there, and they persist in treating you as if you
+were still a mortal, you will not be able to bear them. You will
+try to get into a circle which has never known you except as an
+angel.
+
+ANN. So it was only your vanity that made you run away from us
+after all?
+
+TANNER. Yes, only my vanity, as you call it.
+
+ANN. You need not have kept away from ME on that account.
+
+TANNER. From you above all others. You fought harder than anybody
+against my emancipation.
+
+ANN. [earnestly] Oh, how wrong you are! I would have done
+anything for you.
+
+TANNER. Anything except let me get loose from you. Even then you
+had acquired by instinct that damnable woman's trick of heaping
+obligations on a man, of placing yourself so entirely and
+helplessly at his mercy that at last he dare not take a step
+without running to you for leave. I know a poor wretch whose one
+desire in life is to run away from his wife. She prevents him by
+threatening to throw herself in front of the engine of the train
+he leaves her in. That is what all women do. If we try to go
+where you do not want us to go there is no law to prevent us,
+but when we take the first step your breasts are under our foot
+as it descends: your bodies are under our wheels as we start. No
+woman shall ever enslave me in that way.
+
+ANN. But, Jack, you cannot get through life without considering
+other people a little.
+
+TANNER. Ay; but what other people? It is this consideration of
+other people or rather this cowardly fear of them which we
+call consideration that makes us the sentimental slaves we are.
+To consider you, as you call it, is to substitute your will for
+my own. How if it be a baser will than mine? Are women taught
+better than men or worse? Are mobs of voters taught better than
+statesmen or worse? Worse, of course, in both cases. And then
+what sort of world are you going to get, with its public men
+considering its voting mobs, and its private men considering
+their wives? What does Church and State mean nowadays? The
+Woman and the Ratepayer.
+
+ANN. [placidly] I am so glad you understand politics, Jack: it
+will be most useful to you if you go into parliament [he
+collapses like a pricked bladder]. But I am sorry you thought my
+influence a bad one.
+
+TANNER. I don't say it was a bad one. But bad or good, I didn't
+choose to be cut to your measure. And I won't be cut to it.
+
+ANN. Nobody wants you to, Jack. I assure you--really on my word--
+I don't mind your queer opinions one little bit. You know we have
+all been brought up to have advanced opinions. Why do you persist
+in thinking me so narrow minded?
+
+TANNER. That's the danger of it. I know you don't mind, because
+you've found out that it doesn't matter. The boa constrictor
+doesn't mind the opinions of a stag one little bit when once she
+has got her coils round it.
+
+ANN. [rising in sudden enlightenment] O-o-o-o-oh! NOW I
+understand why you warned Tavy that I am a boa constrictor.
+Granny told me. [She laughs and throws her boa around her neck].
+Doesn't it feel nice and soft, Jack?
+
+TANNER. [in the toils] You scandalous woman, will you throw away
+even your hypocrisy?
+
+ANN. I am never hypocritical with you, Jack. Are you angry? [She
+withdraws the boa and throws it on a chair]. Perhaps I shouldn't
+have done that.
+
+TANNER. [contemptuously] Pooh, prudery! Why should you not, if it
+amuses you?
+
+ANN. [Shyly] Well, because--because I suppose what you really
+meant by the boa constrictor was THIS [she puts her arms round
+his neck].
+
+TANNER. [Staring at her] Magnificent audacity! [She laughs and
+pats his cheeks]. Now just to think that if I mentioned this
+episode not a soul would believe me except the people who would
+cut me for telling, whilst if you accused me of it nobody would
+believe my denial.
+
+ANN. [taking her arms away with perfect dignity] You are
+incorrigible, Jack. But you should not jest about our affection
+for one another. Nobody could possibly misunderstand it. YOU do
+not misunderstand it, I hope.
+
+TANNER. My blood interprets for me, Ann. Poor Ricky Tiky Tavy!
+
+ANN. [looking quickly at him as if this were a new light] Surely
+you are not so absurd as to be jealous of Tavy.
+
+TANNER. Jealous! Why should I be? But I don't wonder at your
+grip of him. I feel the coils tightening round my very self,
+though you are only playing with me.
+
+ANN. Do you think I have designs on Tavy?
+
+TANNER. I know you have.
+
+ANN. [earnestly] Take care, Jack. You may make Tavy very happy
+if you mislead him about me.
+
+TANNER. Never fear: he will not escape you.
+
+ANN. I wonder are you really a clever man!
+
+TANNER. Why this sudden misgiving on the subject?
+
+ANN. You seem to understand all the things I don't understand;
+but you are a perfect baby in the things I do understand.
+
+TANNER. I understand how Tavy feels for you, Ann; you may depend
+on that, at all events.
+
+ANN. And you think you understand how I feel for Tavy, don't
+you?
+
+TANNER. I know only too well what is going to happen to poor
+Tavy.
+
+ANN. I should laugh at you, Jack, if it were not for poor papa's
+death. Mind! Tavy will be very unhappy.
+
+TANNER. Yes; but he won't know it, poor devil. He is a thousand
+times too good for you. That's why he is going to make the
+mistake of his life about you.
+
+ANN. I think men make more mistakes by being too clever than by
+being too good [she sits down, with a trace of contempt for the
+whole male sex in the elegant carriage of her shoulders].
+
+TANNER. Oh, I know you don't care very much about Tavy. But
+there is always one who kisses and one who only allows the kiss.
+Tavy will kiss; and you will only turn the cheek. And you will
+throw him over if anybody better turns up.
+
+ANN. [offended] You have no right to say such things, Jack. They
+are not true, and not delicate. If you and Tavy choose to be
+stupid about me, that is not my fault.
+
+TANNER. [remorsefully] Forgive my brutalities, Ann. They are
+levelled at this wicked world, not at you. [She looks up at him,
+pleased and forgiving. He becomes cautious at once]. All the
+same, I wish Ramsden would come back. I never feel safe with
+you: there is a devilish charm--or no: not a charm, a subtle
+interest [she laughs]. Just so: you know it; and you triumph in
+it. Openly and shamelessly triumph in it!
+
+ANN. What a shocking flirt you are, Jack!
+
+TANNER. A flirt!! I!!
+
+ANN. Yes, a flirt. You are always abusing and offending people.
+but you never really mean to let go your hold of them.
+
+TANNER. I will ring the bell. This conversation has already gone
+further than I intended.
+
+Ramsden and Octavius come back with Miss Ramsden, a hardheaded
+old maiden lady in a plain brown silk gown, with enough rings,
+chains and brooches to show that her plainness of dress is a
+matter of principle, not of poverty. She comes into the room very
+determinedly: the two men, perplexed and downcast, following her.
+Ann rises and goes eagerly to meet her. Tanner retreats to the
+wall between the busts and pretends to study the pictures.
+Ramsden goes to his table as usual; and Octavius clings to the
+neighborhood of Tanner.
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. [almost pushing Ann aside as she comes to Mr.
+Whitefield's chair and plants herself there resolutely] I wash my
+hands of the whole affair.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [very wretched] I know you wish me to take Violet away,
+Miss Ramsden. I will. [He turns irresolutely to the door].
+
+RAMSDEN. No no--
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. What is the use of saying no, Roebuck? Octavius
+knows that I would not turn any truly contrite and repentant
+woman from your doors. But when a woman is not only wicked, but
+intends to go on being wicked, she and I part company.
+
+ANN. Oh, Miss Ramsden, what do you mean? What has Violet said?
+
+RAMSDEN. Violet is certainly very obstinate. She won't leave
+London. I don't understand her.
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. I do. It's as plain as the nose on your face,
+Roebuck, that she won't go because she doesn't want to be
+separated from this man, whoever he is.
+
+ANN. Oh, surely, surely! Octavius: did you speak to her?
+
+OCTAVIUS. She won't tell us anything. She won't make any
+arrangement until she has consulted somebody. It can't be anybody
+else than the scoundrel who has betrayed her.
+
+TANNER. [to Octavius] Well, let her consult him. He will be glad
+enough to have her sent abroad. Where is the difficulty?
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. [Taking the answer out of Octavius's mouth]. The
+difficulty, Mr Jack, is that when he offered to help her I didn't
+offer to become her accomplice in her wickedness. She either
+pledges her word never to see that man again, or else she finds
+some new friends; and the sooner the better.
+
+[The parlormaid appears at the door. Ann hastily resumes her
+seat, and looks as unconcerned as possible. Octavius
+instinctively imitates her].
+
+THE MAID. The cab is at the door, ma'am.
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. What cab?
+
+THE MAID. For Miss Robinson.
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. Oh! [Recovering herself] All right. [The maid
+withdraws]. She has sent for a cab.
+
+TANNER. I wanted to send for that cab half an hour ago.
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. I am glad she understands the position she has
+placed herself in.
+
+RAMSDEN. I don't like her going away in this fashion, Susan. We
+had better not do anything harsh.
+
+OCTAVIUS. No: thank you again and again; but Miss Ramsden is
+quite right. Violet cannot expect to stay.
+
+ANN. Hadn't you better go with her, Tavy?
+
+OCTAVIUS. She won't have me.
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. Of course she won't. She's going straight to that
+man.
+
+TANNER. As a natural result of her virtuous reception here.
+
+RAMSDEN. [much troubled] There, Susan! You hear! and there's some
+truth in it. I wish you could reconcile it with your principles
+to be a little patient with this poor girl. She's very young; and
+there's a time for everything.
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. Oh, she will get all the sympathy she wants from
+the men. I'm surprised at you, Roebuck.
+
+TANNER. So am I, Ramsden, most favorably.
+
+Violet appears at the door. She is as impenitent and self-assured
+a young lady as one would desire to see among the best behaved of
+her sex. Her small head and tiny resolute mouth and chin; her
+haughty crispness of speech and trimness of carriage; the
+ruthless elegance of her equipment, which includes a very smart
+hat with a dead bird in it, mark a personality which is as
+formidable as it is exquisitely pretty. She is not a siren, like
+Ann: admiration comes to her without any compulsion or even
+interest on her part; besides, there is some fun in Ann, but in
+this woman none, perhaps no mercy either: if anything restrains
+her, it is intelligence and pride, not compassion. Her voice
+might be the voice of a schoolmistress addressing a class of
+girls who had disgraced themselves, as she proceeds with complete
+composure and some disgust to say what she has come to say.
+
+VIOLET. I have only looked in to tell Miss Ramsden that she will
+find her birthday present to me, the filagree bracelet, in the
+housekeeper's room.
+
+TANNER. Do come in, Violet, and talk to us sensibly.
+
+VIOLET. Thank you: I have had quite enough of the family
+conversation this morning. So has your mother, Ann: she has gone
+home crying. But at all events, I have found out what some of my
+pretended friends are worth. Good bye.
+
+TANNER. No, no: one moment. I have something to say which I beg
+you to hear. [She looks at him without the slightest curiosity,
+but waits, apparently as much to finish getting her glove on as
+to hear what he has to say]. I am altogether on your side in this
+matter. I congratulate you, with the sincerest respect, on having
+the courage to do what you have done. You are entirely in the
+right; and the family is entirely in the wrong.
+
+Sensation. Ann and Miss Ramsden rise and turn toward the two.
+Violet, more surprised than any of the others, forgets her glove,
+and comes forward into the middle of the room, both puzzled and
+displeased. Qctavius alone does not move or raise his head; he is
+overwhelmed with shame.
+
+ANN. [pleading to Tanner to be sensible] Jack!
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. [outraged} Well, I must say!
+
+VIOLET. [sharply to Tanner] Who told you?
+
+TANNER. Why, Ramsden and Tavy of course. Why should they not?
+
+VIOLET. But they don't know.
+
+TANNER. Don't know what?
+
+VIOLET. They don't know that I am in the right, I mean.
+
+TANNER. Oh, they know it in their hearts, though they think
+themselves bound to blame you by their silly superstitions about
+morality and propriety and so forth. But I know, and the whole
+world really knows, though it dare not say so, that you were
+right to follow your instinct; that vitality and bravery are the
+greatest qualities a woman can have, and motherhood her solemn
+initiation into womanhood; and that the fact of your not being
+legally married matters not one scrap either to your own worth or
+to our real regard for you.
+
+VIOLET. [flushing with indignation] Oh! You think me a wicked
+woman, like the rest. You think I have not only been vile, but
+that I share your abominable opinions. Miss Ramsden: I have borne
+your hard words because I knew you would be sorry for them when
+you found out the truth. But I won't bear such a horrible insult
+as to be complimented by Jack on being one of the wretches of
+whom he approves. I have kept my marriage a secret for my
+husband's sake. But now I claim my right as a married woman not
+to be insulted.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [raising his head with inexpressible relief] You are
+married!
+
+VIOLET. Yes; and I think you might have guessed it. What business
+had you all to take it for granted that I had no right to wear my
+wedding ring? Not one of you even asked me: I cannot forget that.
+
+TANNER. [in ruins] I am utterly crushed. I meant well--I
+apologize--abjectly apologize.
+
+VIOLET. I hope you will be more careful in future about the
+things you say. Of course one does not take them seriously. But
+they are very disagreeable, and rather in bad taste.
+
+TANNER. [bowing to the storm] I have no defence: I shall know
+better in future than to take any woman's part. We have all
+disgraced ourselves in your eyes, I am afraid, except Ann, SHE
+befriended you. For Ann's sake, forgive us.
+
+VIOLET. Yes: Ann has been very kind; but then Ann knew.
+
+TANNER. Oh!
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. [stiffly] And who, pray, is the gentleman who does
+not acknowledge his wife?
+
+VIOLET. [promptly] That is my business, Miss Ramsden, and not
+yours. I have my reasons for keeping my marriage a secret for the
+present.
+
+RAMSDEN. All I can say is that we are extremely sorry, Violet. I
+am shocked to think of how we have treated you.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [awkwardly] I beg your pardon, Violet. I can say no
+more.
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. [still loth to surrender] Of course what you say
+puts a very different complexion on the matter. All the same, I
+owe it to myself--
+
+VIOLET. [cutting her short] You owe me an apology, Miss Ramsden:
+that's what you owe both to yourself and to me. If you were a
+married woman you would not like sitting in the housekeeper's
+room and being treated like a naughty child by young girls and
+old ladies without any serious duties and responsibilities.
+
+TANNER. Don't hit us when we're down, Violet. We seem to have
+made fools of ourselves; but really it was you who made fools of
+us.
+
+VIOLET. It was no business of yours, Jack, in any case.
+
+TANNER. No business of mine! Why, Ramsden as good as accused me
+of being the unknown gentleman.
+
+Ramsden makes a frantic demonstration; but Violet's cool keen
+anger extinguishes it.
+
+VIOLET. You! Oh, how infamous! how abominable! How disgracefully
+you have all been talking about me! If my husband knew it he
+would never let me speak to any of you again. [To Ramsden] I
+think you might have spared me, at least.
+
+RAMSDEN. But I assure you I never--at least it is a monstrous
+perversion of something I said that--
+
+MISS RAMSDEN. You needn't apologize, Roebuck. She brought it all
+on herself. It is for her to apologize for having deceived us.
+
+VIOLET. I can make allowances for you, Miss Ramsden: you cannot
+understand how I feel on this subject though I should have
+expected rather better taste from people of greater experience.
+However, I quite feel that you have all placed yourselves in a
+very painful position; and the most truly considerate thing for
+me to do is to go at once. Good morning.
+
+She goes, leaving them staring.
+
+Miss RAMSDEN. Well, I must say--!
+
+RAMSDEN. [plaintively] I don't think she is quite fair to us.
+
+TANNER. You must cower before the wedding ring like the rest of
+us, Ramsden. The cup of our ignominy is full.
+
+
+
+
+Act II
+
+On the carriage drive in the park of a country house near
+Richmond a motor car has broken down. It stands in front of a
+clump of trees round which the drive sweeps to the house, which
+is partly visible through them: indeed Tanner, standing in the
+drive with the car on his right hand, could get an unobstructed
+view of the west corner of the house on his left were he not far
+too much interested in a pair of supine legs in blue serge
+trousers which protrude from beneath the machine. He is watching
+them intently with bent back and hands supported on his knees.
+His leathern overcoat and peaked cap proclaim him one of the
+dismounted passengers.
+
+THE LEGS. Aha! I got him.
+
+TANNER. All right now?
+
+THE LEGS. All right now.
+
+Tanner stoops and takes the legs by the ankles, drawing their
+owner forth like a wheelbarrow, walking on his hands, with a
+hammer in his mouth. He is a young man in a neat suit of blue
+serge, clean shaven, dark eyed, square fingered, with short well
+brushed black hair and rather irregular sceptically turned
+eyebrows. When he is manipulating the car his movements are swift
+and sudden, yet attentive and deliberate. With Tanner and
+Tanner's friends his manner is not in the least deferential, but
+cool and reticent, keeping them quite effectually at a distance
+whilst giving them no excuse for complaining of him. Nevertheless
+he has a vigilant eye on them always, and that, too, rather
+cynically, like a man who knows the world well from its seamy
+side. He speaks slowly and with a touch of sarcasm; and as he
+does not at all affect the gentleman in his speech, it may be
+inferred that his smart appearance is a mark of respect to
+himself and his own class, not to that which employs him.
+
+He now gets into the car to test his machinery and put his cap
+and overcoat on again. Tanner takes off his leather overcoat and
+pitches it into the car. The chauffeur (or automobilist or
+motoreer or whatever England may presently decide to call him)
+looks round inquiringly in the act of stowing away his hammer.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. Had enough of it, eh?
+
+TANNER. I may as well walk to the house and stretch my legs and
+calm my nerves a little. [Looking at his watch] I suppose you
+know that we have come from Hyde Park Corner to Richmond in
+twenty-one minutes.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. I'd have done it under fifteen if I'd had a clear
+road all the way.
+
+TANNER. Why do you do it? Is it for love of sport or for the fun
+of terrifying your unfortunate employer?
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. What are you afraid of?
+
+TANNER. The police, and breaking my neck.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. Well, if you like easy going, you can take a bus,
+you know. It's cheaper. You pay me to save your time and give you
+the value of your thousand pound car. [He sits down calmly].
+
+TANNER. I am the slave of that car and of you too. I dream of the
+accursed thing at night.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. You'll get over that. If you're going up to the
+house, may I ask how long you're goin to stay there? Because if
+you mean to put in the whole morning talkin to the ladies, I'11
+put the car in the stables and make myself comfortable. If not,
+I'll keep the car on the go about here til you come.
+
+TANNER. Better wait here. We shan't be long. There's a young
+American gentleman, a Mr Malone, who is driving Mr Robinson down
+in his new American steam car.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. [springing up and coming hastily out of the car to
+Tanner] American steam car! Wot! racin us down from London!
+
+TANNER. Perhaps they're here already.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. If I'd known it! [with deep reproach] Why didn't
+you tell me, Mr Tanner?
+
+TANNER. Because I've been told that this car is capable of 84
+miles an hour; and I already know what YOU are capable of when
+there is a rival car on the road. No, Henry: there are things it
+is not good for you to know; and this was one of them. However,
+cheer up: we are going to have a day after your own heart. The
+American is to take Mr Robinson and his sister and Miss
+Whitefield. We are to take Miss Rhoda.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. [consoled, and musing on another matter] That's
+Miss Whitefield's sister, isn't it?
+
+TANNER. Yes.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. And Miss Whitefield herself is goin in the other
+car? Not with you?
+
+TANNER. Why the devil should she come with me? Mr Robinson will
+be in the other car. [The Chauffeur looks at Tanner with cool
+incredulity, and turns to the car, whistling a popular air softly
+to himself. Tanner, a little annoyed, is about to pursue the
+subject when he hears the footsteps of Octavius on the gravel.
+Octavius is coming from the house, dressed for motoring, but
+without his overcoat]. We've lost the race, thank Heaven: here's
+Mr Robinson. Well, Tavy, is the steam car a success?
+
+OCTAVIUS. I think so. We came from Hyde Park Corner here in
+seventeen minutes. [The Chauffeur, furious, kicks the car with a
+groan of vexation]. How long were you?
+
+TANNER. Oh, about three quarters of an hour or so.
+
+THE CHAUFFEUR. [remonstrating] Now, now, Mr Tanner, come now! We
+could ha done it easy under fifteen.
+
+TANNER. By the way, let me introduce you. Mr Octavius Robinson:
+Mr Enry Straker.
+
+STRAKER. Pleased to meet you, sir. Mr Tanner is gittin at you
+with his Enry Straker, you know. You call it Henery. But I don't
+mind, bless you.
+
+TANNER. You think it's simply bad taste in me to chaff him, Tavy.
+But you're wrong. This man takes more trouble to drop his aiches
+than ever his father did to pick them up. It's a mark of caste to
+him. I have never met anybody more swollen with the pride of
+class than Enry is.
+
+STRAKER. Easy, easy! A little moderation, Mr Tanner.
+
+TANNER. A little moderation, Tavy, you observe. You would tell me
+to draw it mild, But this chap has been educated. What's more, he
+knows that we haven't. What was that board school of yours,
+Straker?
+
+STRAKER. Sherbrooke Road.
+
+TANNER. Sherbrooke Road! Would any of us say Rugby! Harrow! Eton!
+in that tone of intellectual snobbery? Sherbrooke Road is a place
+where boys learn something; Eton is a boy farm where we are sent
+because we are nuisances at home, and because in after life,
+whenever a Duke is mentioned, we can claim him as an old
+schoolfellow.
+
+STRAKER. You don't know nothing about it, Mr. Tanner. It's not
+the Board School that does it: it's the Polytechnic.
+
+TANNER. His university, Octavius. Not Oxford, Cambridge, Durham,
+Dublin or Glasgow. Not even those Nonconformist holes in Wales.
+No, Tavy. Regent Street, Chelsea, the Borough--I don't know half
+their confounded names: these are his universities, not mere
+shops for selling class limitations like ours. You despise
+Oxford, Enry, don't you?
+
+STRAKER. No, I don't. Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should
+think, for people that like that sort of place. They teach you to
+be a gentleman there. In the Polytechnic they teach you to be an
+engineer or such like. See?
+
+TANNER. Sarcasm, Tavy, sarcasm! Oh, if you could only see into
+Enry's soul, the depth of his contempt for a gentleman, the
+arrogance of his pride in being an engineer, would appal you. He
+positively likes the car to break down because it brings out my
+gentlemanly helplessness and his workmanlike skill and resource.
+
+STRAKER. Never you mind him, Mr Robinson. He likes to talk. We
+know him, don't we?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [earnestly] But there's a great truth at the bottom of
+what he says. I believe most intensely in the dignity of labor.
+
+STRAKER. [unimpressed] That's because you never done any Mr
+Robinson. My business is to do away with labor. You'll get more
+out of me and a machine than you will out of twenty laborers, and
+not so much to drink either.
+
+TANNER. For Heaven's sake, Tavy, don't start him on political
+economy. He knows all about it; and we don't. You're only a
+poetic Socialist, Tavy: he's a scientific one.
+
+STRAKER. [unperturbed] Yes. Well, this conversation is very
+improvin; but I've got to look after the car; and you two want
+to talk about your ladies. I know. [He retires to busy himself
+about the car; and presently saunters off towards the house].
+
+TANNER. That's a very momentous social phenomenon.
+
+OCTAVIUS. What is?
+
+TANNER. Straker is. Here have we literary and cultured persons
+been for years setting up a cry of the New Woman whenever some
+unusually old fashioned female came along; and never noticing
+the advent of the New Man. Straker's the New Man.
+
+OOCTAVIUS. I see nothing new about him, except your way of
+chaffing him. But I don't want to talk about him just now. I want
+to speak to you about Ann.
+
+TANNER. Straker knew even that. He learnt it at the Polytechnic,
+probably. Well, what about Ann? Have you proposed to her?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [self-reproachfully] I was brute enough to do so last
+night.
+
+TANNER. Brute enough! What do you mean?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [dithyrambically] Jack: we men are all coarse. We never
+understand how exquisite a woman's sensibilities are. How could I
+have done such a thing!
+
+TANNER. Done what, you maudlin idiot?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Yes, I am an idiot. Jack: if you had heard her voice!
+if you had seen her tears! I have lain awake all night thinking
+of them. If she had reproached me, I could have borne it better.
+
+TANNER. Tears! that's dangerous. What did she say?
+
+OCTAVIUS. She asked me how she could think of anything now but
+her dear father. She stifled a sob--[he breaks down].
+
+TANNER. [patting him on the back] Bear it like a man, Tavy, even
+if you feel it like an ass. It's the old game: she's not tired of
+playing with you yet.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [impatiently] Oh, don't be a fool, Jack. Do you suppose
+this eternal shallow cynicism of yours has any real bearing on a
+nature like hers?
+
+TANNER. Hm! Did she say anything else?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Yes; and that is why I expose myself and her to your
+ridicule by telling you what passed.
+
+TANNER. [remorsefully] No, dear Tavy, not ridicule, on my honor!
+However, no matter. Go on.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Her sense of duty is so devout, so perfect, so--
+
+TANNER. Yes: I know. Go on.
+
+OCTAVIUS. You see, under this new arrangement, you and Ramsden
+are her guardians; and she considers that all her duty to her
+father is now transferred to you. She said she thought I ought to
+have spoken to you both in the first instance. Of course she is
+right; but somehow it seems rather absurd that I am to come to
+you and formally ask to be received as a suitor for your ward's
+hand.
+
+TANNER. I am glad that love has not totally extinguished your
+sense of humor, Tavy.
+
+OCTAVIUS. That answer won't satisfy her.
+
+TANNER. My official answer is, obviously, Bless you, my children:
+may you be happy!
+
+OCTAVIUS. I wish you would stop playing the fool about this. If
+it is not serious to you, it is to me, and to her.
+
+TANNER. You know very well that she is as free to choose as you.
+She does not think so.
+
+TANNER. Oh, doesn't she! just! However, say what you want me to
+do.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I want you to tell her sincerely and earnestly what you
+think about me. I want you to tell her that you can trust her to
+me--that is, if you feel you can.
+
+TANNER. I have no doubt that I can trust her to you. What worries
+me is the idea of trusting you to her. Have you read
+Maeterlinck's book about the bee?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [keeping his temper with difficulty] I am not
+discussing literature at present.
+
+TANNER. Be just a little patient with me. I am not discussing
+literature: the book about the bee is natural history. It's an
+awful lesson to mankind. You think that you are Ann's suitor;
+that you are the pursuer and she the pursued; that it is your
+part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome. Fool: it is
+you who are the pursued, the marked down quarry, the destined
+prey. You need not sit looking longingly at the bait through the
+wires of the trap: the door is open, and will remain so until it
+shuts behind you for ever.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I wish I could believe that, vilely as you put it.
+
+TANNER. Why, man, what other work has she in life but to get a
+husband? It is a woman's business to get married as soon as
+possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can. You
+have your poems and your tragedies to work at: Ann has nothing.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I cannot write without inspiration. And nobody can give
+me that except Ann.
+
+TANNER. Well, hadn't you better get it from her at a safe
+distance? Petrarch didn't see half as much of Laura, nor Dante
+of Beatrice, as you see of Ann now; and yet they wrote
+first-rate poetry--at least so I'm told. They never exposed their
+idolatry to the test of domestic familiarity; and it lasted them
+to their graves. Marry Ann and at the end of a week you'll find
+no more inspiration than in a plate of muffins.
+
+OCTAVIUS. You think I shall tire of her.
+
+TANNER. Not at all: you don't get tired of muffins. But you don't
+find inspiration in them; and you won't in her when she ceases to
+be a poet's dream and becomes a solid eleven stone wife. You'll
+be forced to dream about somebody else; and then there will be a
+row.
+
+OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is no use, Jack. You don't
+understand. You have never been in love.
+
+TANNER. I! I have never been out of it. Why, I am in love even
+with Ann. But I am neither the slave of love nor its dupe. Go to
+the bee, thou poet: consider her ways and be wise. By Heaven,
+Tavy, if women could do without our work, and we ate their
+children's bread instead of making it, they would kill us as
+the spider kills her mate or as the bees kill the drone. And
+they would be right if we were good for nothing but love.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Ah, if we were only good enough for Love! There is
+nothing like Love: there is nothing else but Love: without it
+the world would be a dream of sordid horror.
+
+TANNER. And this--this is the man who asks me to give him the
+hand of my ward! Tavy: I believe we were changed in our cradles,
+and that you are the real descendant of Don Juan.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I beg you not to say anything like that to Ann.
+
+TANNER. Don't be afraid. She has marked you for her own; and
+nothing will stop her now. You are doomed. [Straker comes back
+with a newspaper]. Here comes the New Man, demoralizing himself
+with a halfpenny paper as usual.
+
+STRAKER. Now, would you believe it: Mr Robinson, when we're
+out motoring we take in two papers, the Times for him, the Leader
+or the Echo for me. And do you  think I ever see my paper? Not
+much. He grabs the Leader and leaves me to stodge myself with his
+Times.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Are there no winners in the Times?
+
+TANNER. Enry don't old with bettin, Tavy. Motor records are his
+weakness. What's the latest?
+
+STRAKER. Paris to Biskra at forty mile an hour average, not
+countin the Mediterranean.
+
+TANNER. How many killed?
+
+STRAKER. Two silly sheep. What does it matter? Sheep don't cost
+such a lot: they were glad to ave the price without the trouble
+o sellin em to the butcher. All the same, d'y'see, there'll be a
+clamor agin it presently; and then the French Government'll stop
+it; an our chance will be gone see? That what makes me fairly
+mad: Mr Tanner won't do a good run while he can.
+
+TANNER. Tavy: do you remember my uncle James?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Yes. Why?
+
+TANNER. Uncle James had a first rate cook: he couldn't digest
+anything except what she cooked. Well, the poor man was shy and
+hated society. But his cook was proud of her skill, and wanted to
+serve up dinners to princes and ambassadors. To prevent her from
+leaving him, that poor old man had to give a big dinner twice a
+month, and suffer agonies of awkwardness. Now here am I; and here
+is this chap Enry Straker, the New Man. I loathe travelling; but
+I rather like Enry. He cares for nothing but tearing along in a
+leather coat and goggles, with two inches of dust all over him,
+at sixty miles an hour and the risk of his life and mine. Except,
+of course, when he is lying on his back in the mud under the
+machine trying to find out where it has given way. Well, if I
+don't give him a thousand mile run at least once a fortnight I
+shall lose him. He will give me the sack and go to some American
+millionaire; and I shall have to put up with a nice respectful
+groom-gardener-amateur, who will touch his hat and know his
+place. I am Enry's slave, just as Uncle James was his cook's
+slave.
+
+STRAKER. [exasperated] Garn! I wish I had a car that would go as
+fast as you can talk, Mr Tanner. What I say is that you lose
+money by a motor car unless you keep it workin. Might as well ave
+a pram and a nussmaid to wheel you in it as that car and me if
+you don't git the last inch out of us both.
+
+TANNER. [soothingly] All right, Henry, all right. We'll go out
+for half an hour presently.
+
+STRAKER. [in disgust] Arf an ahr! [He returns to his machine;
+seats himself in it; and turns up a fresh page of his paper in
+search of more news].
+
+OCTAVIUS. Oh, that reminds me. I have a note for you from
+Rhoda. [He gives Tanner a note].
+
+TANNER. [opening it] I rather think Rhoda is heading for a row
+with Ann. As a rule there is only one person an English girl
+hates more than she hates her mother; and that's her eldest
+sister. But Rhoda positively prefers her mother to Ann. She--
+[indignantly] Oh, I say!
+
+OCTAVIUS. What's the matter?
+
+TANNER. Rhoda was to have come with me for a ride in the motor
+car. She says Ann has forbidden her to go out with me.
+
+Straker suddenly begins whistling his favorite air with
+remarkable deliberation. Surprised by this burst of larklike
+melody, and jarred by a sardonic note in its cheerfulness, they
+turn and look inquiringly at him. But he is busy with his paper;
+and nothing comes of their movement.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [recovering himself] Does she give any reason?
+
+TANNER. Reason! An insult is not a reason. Ann forbids her to be
+alone with me on any occasion. Says I am not a fit person for a
+young girl to be with. What do you think of your paragon now?
+
+OCTAVIUS. You must remember that she has a very heavy
+responsibility now that her father is dead. Mrs Whitefield is
+too weak to control Rhoda.
+
+TANNER. [staring at him] In short, you agree with Ann.
+
+OCTAVIUS. No; but I think I understand her. You must admit that
+your views are hardly suited for the formation of a young girl's
+mind and character.
+
+TANNER. I admit nothing of the sort. I admit that the formation
+of a young lady's mind and character usually consists in telling
+her lies; but I object to the particular lie that I am in the
+habit of abusing the confidence of girls.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Ann doesn't say that, Jack.
+
+TANNER. What else does she mean?
+
+STRAKER. [catching sight of Ann coming from the house] Miss
+Whitefield, gentlemen. [He dismounts and strolls away down the
+avenue with the air of a man who knows he is no longer wanted].
+
+ANN. [coming between Octavius and Tanner]. Good morning, Jack. I
+have come to tell you that poor Rhoda has got one of her
+headaches and cannot go out with you to-day in the car. It is a
+cruel disappointment to her, poor child!
+
+TANNER. What do you say now, Tavy,
+
+OCTAVIUS. Surely you cannot misunderstand, Jack. Ann is showing
+you the kindest consideration, even at the cost of deceiving you.
+
+ANN. What do you mean?
+
+TANNER. Would you like to cure Rhoda's headache, Ann?
+
+ANN. Of course.
+
+TANNER. Then tell her what you said just now; and add that you
+arrived about two minutes after I had received her letter and
+read it.
+
+ANN. Rhoda has written to you!
+
+TANNER. With full particulars.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Never mind him, Ann. You were right, quite right. Ann
+was only doing her duty, Jack; and you know it. Doing it in the
+kindest way, too.
+
+ANN. [going to Octavius] How kind you are, Tavy! How helpful!
+How well you understand!
+
+Octavius beams.
+
+TANNER. Ay: tighten the coils. You love her, Tavy, don't you?
+
+OCTAVIUS. She knows I do.
+
+ANN. Hush. For shame, Tavy!
+
+TANNER. Oh, I give you leave. I am your guardian; and I commit
+you to Tavy's care for the next hour.
+
+ANN. No, Jack. I must speak to you about Rhoda. Ricky: will you
+go back to the house and entertain your American friend? He's
+rather on Mamma's hands so early in the morning. She wants to
+finish her housekeeping.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I fly, dearest Ann [he kisses her hand].
+
+ANN. [tenderly] Ricky Ticky Tavy!
+
+He looks at her with an eloquent blush, and runs off.
+
+TANNER. [bluntly] Now look here, Ann. This time you've landed
+yourself; and if Tavy were not in love with you past all
+salvation he'd have found out what an incorrigible liar you are.
+
+ANN. You misunderstand, Jack. I didn't dare tell Tavy the truth.
+
+TANNER. No: your daring is generally in the opposite direction.
+What the devil do you mean by telling Rhoda that I am too vicious
+to associate with her? How can I ever have any human or decent
+relations with her again, now that you have poisoned her mind in
+that abominable way?
+
+ANN. I know you are incapable of behaving badly.
+
+TANNER. Then why did you lie to her?
+
+ANN. I had to.
+
+TANNER. Had to!
+
+ANN. Mother made me.
+
+TANNER. [his eye flashing] Ha! I might have known it. The mother!
+Always the mother!
+
+ANN. It was that dreadful book of yours. You know how timid
+mother is. All timid women are conventional: we must be
+conventional, Jack, or we are so cruelly, so vilely misunderstood.
+Even you, who are a man, cannot say what you think without being
+misunderstood and vilified--yes: I admit it: I have had to vilify
+you. Do you want to have poor Rhoda misunderstood and vilified to
+the same way? Would it be right for mother to let her expose
+herself to such treatment before she is old enough to judge for
+herself?
+
+TANNER. In short, the way to avoid misunderstanding is for
+everybody to lie and slander and insinuate and pretend as hard as
+they can. That is what obeying your mother comes to.
+
+ANN. I love my mother, Jack.
+
+TANNER. [working himself up into a sociological rage] Is that any
+reason why you are not to call your soul your own? Oh, I protest
+against this vile abjection of youth to age! look at fashionable
+society as you know it. What does it pretend to be? An exquisite
+dance of nymphs. What is it? A horrible procession of wretched
+girls, each in the claws of a cynical, cunning, avaricious,
+disillusioned, ignorantly experienced, foul-minded old woman whom
+she calls mother, and whose duty it is to corrupt her mind and
+sell her to the highest bidder. Why do these unhappy slaves marry
+anybody, however old and vile, sooner than not marry at all?
+Because marriage is their only means of escape from these
+decrepit fiends who hide their selfish ambitions, their jealous
+hatreds of the young rivals who have supplanted them, under the
+mask of maternal duty and family affection. Such things are
+abominable: the voice of nature proclaims for the daughter a
+father's care and for the son a mother's. The law for father and
+son and mother and daughter is not the law of love: it is the
+law of revolution, of emancipation, of final supersession of the
+old and worn-out by the young and capable. I tell you, the first
+duty of manhood and womanhood is a Declaration of Independence:
+the man who pleads his father's authority is no man: the woman
+who pleads her mother's authority is unfit to bear citizens to a
+free people.
+
+ANN. [watching him with quiet curiosity] I suppose you will go in
+seriously for politics some day, Jack.
+
+TANNER. [heavily let down] Eh? What? Wh--? [Collecting his
+scattered wits] What has that got to do with what I have been
+saying?
+
+ANN. You talk so well.
+
+TANNER. Talk! Talk! It means nothing to you but talk. Well, go
+back to your mother, and help her to poison Rhoda's imagination
+as she has poisoned yours. It is the tame elephants who enjoy
+capturing the wild ones.
+
+ANN. I am getting on. Yesterday I was a boa constrictor: to-day I
+am an elephant.
+
+TANNER. Yes. So pack your trunk and begone; I have no more to say
+to you.
+
+ANN. You are so utterly unreasonable and impracticable. What can
+I do?
+
+TANNER. Do! Break your chains. Go your way according to your own
+conscience and not according to your mother's. Get your mind
+clean and vigorous; and learn to enjoy a fast ride in a motor car
+instead of seeing nothing in it but an excuse for a detestable
+intrigue. Come with me to Marseilles and across to Algiers and to
+Biskra, at sixty miles an hour. Come right down to the Cape if
+you like. That will be a Declaration of Independence with a
+vengeance. You can write a book about it afterwards. That will
+finish your mother and make a woman of you.
+
+ANN. [thoughtfully] I don't think there would be any harm in
+that, Jack. You are my guardian: you stand in my father's place,
+by his own wish. Nobody could say a word against our travelling
+together. It would be delightful: thank you a thousand times,
+Jack. I'll come.
+
+TANNER. [aghast] You'll come!!!
+
+ANN. Of course.
+
+TANNER. But-- [he stops, utterly appalled; then resumes feebly]
+No: look here, Ann: if there's no harm in it there's no point in
+doing it.
+
+ANN. How absurd you are! You don't want to compromise me, do you?
+
+TANNER. Yes: that's the whole sense of my proposal.
+
+ANN. You are talking the greatest nonsense; and you know it. You
+would never do anything to hurt me.
+
+TANNER. Well, if you don't want to be compromised, don't come.
+
+ANN. [with simple earnestness] Yes, I will come, Jack, since you
+wish it. You are my guardian; and think we ought to see more of
+one another and come to know one another better. [Gratefully]
+It's very thoughtful and very kind of you, Jack, to offer me this
+lovely holiday, especially after what I said about Rhoda. You
+really are good--much better than you think. When do we start?
+
+TANNER. But--
+
+The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Mrs Whitefield
+from the house. She is accompanied by the American gentleman, and
+followed by Ramsden and Octavius.
+
+Hector Malone is an Eastern American; but he is not at all
+ashamed of his nationality. This makes English people of fashion
+think well of him, as of a young fellow who is manly enough to
+confess to an obvious disadvantage without any attempt to conceal
+or extenuate it. They feel that he ought not to be made to suffer
+for what is clearly not his fault, and make a point of being
+specially kind to him. His chivalrous manners to women, and his
+elevated moral sentiments, being both gratuitous and unusual,
+strike them as being a little unfortunate; and though they find
+his vein of easy humor rather amusing when it has ceased to
+puzzle them (as it does at first), they have had to make him
+understand that he really must not tell anecdotes unless they
+are strictly personal and scandalous, and also that oratory is an
+accomplishment which belongs to a cruder stage of civilization
+than that in which his migration has landed him. On these points
+Hector is not quite convinced: he still thinks that the British
+are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent
+their various incapacities as points of good breeding. English
+life seems to him to suffer from a lack of edifying rhetoric
+(which he calls moral tone); English behavior to show a want of
+respect for womanhood; English pronunciation to fail very
+vulgarly in tackling such words as world, girl, bird, etc.;
+English society to be plain spoken to an extent which stretches
+occasionally to intolerable coarseness; and English intercourse
+to need enlivening by games and stories and other pastimes; so he
+does not feel called upon to acquire these defects after taking
+great paths to cultivate himself in a first rate manner before
+venturing across the Atlantic. To this culture he finds English
+people either totally indifferent as they very commonly are to
+all culture, or else politely evasive, the truth being that
+Hector's culture is nothing but a state of saturation with our
+literary exports of thirty years ago, reimported by him to be
+unpacked at a moment's notice and hurled at the head of English
+literature, science and art, at every conversational opportunity.
+The dismay set up by these sallies encourages him in his belief
+that he is helping to educate England. When he finds people
+chattering harmlessly about Anatole France and Nietzsche, he
+devastates them with Matthew Arnold, the Autocrat of the
+Breakfast Table, and even Macaulay; and as he is devoutly
+religious at bottom, he first leads the unwary, by humorous
+irreverences, to wave popular theology out of account in
+discussing moral questions with him, and then scatters them in
+confusion by demanding whether the carrying out of his ideals of
+conduct was not the manifest object of God Almighty in creating
+honest men and pure women. The engaging freshness of his
+personality and the dumbfoundering staleness of his culture make
+it extremely difficult to decide whether he is worth knowing; for
+whilst his company is undeniably pleasant and enlivening, there
+is intellectually nothing new to be got out of him, especially as
+he despises politics, and is careful not to talk commercial shop,
+in which department he is probably much in advance of his English
+capitalist friends. He gets on best with romantic Christians of
+the amoristic sect: hence the friendship which has sprung up
+between him and Octavius.
+
+In appearance Hector is a neatly built young man of twenty-four,
+with a short, smartly trimmed black beard, clear, well shaped
+eyes, and an ingratiating vivacity of expression. He is, from the
+fashionable point of view, faultlessly dressed. As he comes along
+the drive from the house with Mrs Whitefield he is sedulously
+making himself agreeable and entertaining, and thereby placing on
+her slender wit a burden it is unable to bear. An Englishman
+would let her alone, accepting boredom and indifference of their
+common lot; and the poor lady wants to be either let alone or let
+prattle about the things that interest her.
+
+Ramsden strolls over to inspect the motor car. Octavius joins
+Hector.
+
+ANN. [pouncing on her mother joyously] Oh, mamma, what do you
+think! Jack is going to take me to Nice in his motor car. Isn't
+it lovely? I am the happiest person in London.
+
+TANNER. [desperately] Mrs Whitefield objects. I am sure she
+objects. Doesn't she, Ramsden?
+
+RAMSDEN. I should think it very likely indeed.
+
+ANN. You don't object, do you, mother?
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. I object! Why should I? I think it will do you
+good, Ann. [Trotting over to Tanner] I meant to ask you to take
+Rhoda out for a run occasionally: she is too much in the house;
+but it will do when you come back.
+
+TANNER. Abyss beneath abyss of perfidy!
+
+ANN. [hastily, to distract attention from this outburst] Oh, I
+forgot: you have not met Mr Malone. Mr Tanner, my guardian: Mr
+Hector Malone.
+
+HECTOR. Pleased to meet you, Mr Tanner. I should like to suggest
+an extension of the travelling party to Nice, if I may.
+
+ANN. Oh, we're all coming. That's understood, isn't it?
+
+HECTOR. I also am the modest possessor of a motor car. If Miss
+Robinson will allow me the privilege of taking her, my car is at
+her service.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Violet!
+
+General constraint.
+
+ANN. [subduedly] Come, mother: we must leave them to talk over
+the arrangements. I must see to my travelling kit.
+
+Mrs Whitefield looks bewildered; but Ann draws her discreetly
+away; and they disappear round the corner towards the house.
+
+HECTOR. I think I may go so far as to say that I can depend on
+Miss Robinson's consent.
+
+Continued embarrassment.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I'm afraid we must leave Violet behind, There are
+circumstances which make it impossible for her to come on such an
+expedition.
+
+HECTOR. [amused and not at all convinced] Too American, eh? Must
+the young lady have a chaperone?
+
+OCTAVIUS. It's not that, Malone--at least not altogether.
+
+HECTOR. Indeed! May I ask what other objection applies?
+
+TANNER. [impatiently] Oh, tell him, tell him. We shall never be
+able to keep the secret unless everybody knows what it is. Mr
+Malone: if you go to Nice with Violet, you go with another man's
+wife. She is married.
+
+HECTOR. (thunderstruck] You don't tell me so!
+
+TANNER. We do. In confidence.
+
+RAMSDEN. [with an air of importance, lest Malone should suspect a
+misalliance] Her marriage has not yet been made known: she
+desires that it shall not be mentioned for the present.
+
+HECTOR. I shall respect the lady's wishes. Would it be indiscreet
+to ask who her husband is, in case I should have an opportunity
+of consulting him about this trip?
+
+TANNER. We don't know who he is.
+
+HECTOR. [retiring into his shell in a very marked manner] In that
+case, I have no more to say.
+
+They become more embarrassed than ever.
+
+OCTAVIUS. You must think this very strange.
+
+HECTOR. A little singular. Pardon me for saving so.
+
+RAMSDEN. [half apologetic, half huffy] The young lady was married
+secretly; and her husband has forbidden her, it seems, to declare
+his name. It is only right to tell you, since you are interested
+in Miss--er--in Violet.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [sympathetically] I hope this is not a disappointment
+to you.
+
+HECTOR. [softened, coming out of his shell again] Well it is a
+blow. I can hardly understand how a man can leave a wife in such
+a position. Surely it's not customary. It's not manly. It's not
+considerate.
+
+OCTAVIUS. We feel that, as you may imagine, pretty deeply.
+
+RAMSDEN. [testily] It is some young fool who has not enough
+experience to know what mystifications of this kind lead to.
+
+HECTOR. [with strong symptoms of moral repugnance] I hope so. A
+man need be very young and pretty foolish too to be excused for
+such conduct. You take a very lenient view, Mr Ramsden. Too
+lenient to my mind. Surely marriage should ennoble a man.
+
+TANNER. [sardonically] Ha!
+
+HECTOR. Am I to gather from that cacchination that you don't
+agree with me, Mr Tanner?
+
+TANNER. [drily] Get married and try. You may find it delightful
+for a while: you certainly won't find it ennobling. The greatest
+common measure of a man and a woman is not necessarily greater
+than the man's single measure.
+
+HECTOR. Well, we think in America that a woman's moral number is
+higher than a man's, and that the purer nature of a woman lifts a
+man right out of himself, and makes him better than he was.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [with conviction] So it does.
+
+TANNER. No wonder American women prefer to live in Europe! It's
+more comfortable than standing all their lives on an altar to be
+worshipped. Anyhow, Violet's husband has not been ennobled. So
+what's to be done?
+
+HECTOR. [shaking his head] I can't dismiss that man's conduct as
+lightly as you do, Mr Tanner. However, I'll say no more. Whoever
+he is, he's Miss Robinson's husband; and I should be glad for her
+sake to think better of him.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [touched; for he divines a secret sorrow] I'm very
+sorry, Malone. Very sorry.
+
+HECTOR. [gratefully] You're a good fellow, Robinson, Thank you.
+
+TANNER. Talk about something else. Violet's coming from the
+house.
+
+HECTOR. I should esteem it a very great favor, men, if you would
+take the opportunity to let me have a few words with the lady
+alone. I shall have to cry off this trip; and it's rather a
+delicate--
+
+RAMSDEN. [glad to escape] Say no more. Come Tanner, Come, Tavy.
+[He strolls away into the park with Octavius and Tanner, past the
+motor car].
+
+Violet comes down the avenue to Hector.
+
+VIOLET. Are they looking?
+
+HECTOR. No.
+
+She kisses him.
+
+VIOLET. Have you been telling lies for my sake?
+
+HECTOR. Lying! Lying hardly describes it. I overdo it. I get
+carried away in an ecstasy of mendacity. Violet: I wish you'd let
+me own up.
+
+VIOLET. [instantly becoming serious and resolute] No, no. Hector:
+you promised me not to.
+
+HECTOR. I'll keep my promise until you release me from it. But I
+feel mean, lying to those men, and denying my wife. Just
+dastardly.
+
+VIOLET. I wish your father were not so unreasonable.
+
+HECTOR. He's not unreasonable. He's right from his point of view.
+He has a prejudice against the English middle class.
+
+VIOLET. It's too ridiculous. You know how I dislike saying such
+things to you, Hector; but if I were to--oh, well, no matter.
+
+HECTOR. I know. If you were to marry the son of an English
+manufacturer of office furniture, your friends would consider it
+a misalliance. And here's my silly old dad, who is the biggest
+office furniture man in the world, would show me the door for
+marrying the most perfect lady in England merely because she has
+no handle to her name. Of course it's just absurd. But I tell
+you, Violet, I don't like deceiving him. I feel as if I was
+stealing his money. Why won't you let me own up?
+
+VIOLET. We can't afford it. You can be as romantic as you please
+about love, Hector; but you mustn't be romantic about money.
+
+HECTOR. [divided between his uxoriousness and his habitual
+elevation of moral sentiment] That's very English. [Appealing
+to her impulsively] Violet: Dad's bound to find us out some
+day.
+
+VIOLET. Oh yes, later on of course. But don't let's go over this
+every time we meet, dear. You promised--
+
+HECTOR. All right, all right, I--
+
+VIOLET. [not to be silenced] It is I and not you who suffer by
+this concealment; and as to facing a struggle and poverty and all
+that sort of thing I simply will not do it. It's too silly.
+
+HECTOR. You shall not. I'll sort of borrow the money from my dad
+until I get on my own feet; and then I can own up and pay up at
+the same time.
+
+VIOLET. [alarmed and indignant] Do you mean to work? Do you want
+to spoil our marriage?
+
+HECTOR. Well, I don't mean to let marriage spoil my character.
+Your friend Mr Tanner has got the laugh on me a bit already about
+that; and--
+
+VIOLET. The beast! I hate Jack Tanner.
+
+HECTOR. [magnanimously] Oh, he's all right: he only needs the
+love of a good woman to ennoble him. Besides, he's proposed a
+motoring trip to Nice; and I'm going to take you.
+
+VIOLET. How jolly!
+
+HECTOR. Yes; but how are we going to manage? You see, they've
+warned me off going with you, so to speak. They've told me in
+confidence that you're married. That's just the most overwhelming
+confidence I've ever been honored with.
+
+Tanner returns with Straker, who goes to his car.
+
+TANNER. Your car is a great success, Mr Malone. Your engineer is
+showing it off to Mr Ramsden.
+
+HECTOR. [eagerly--forgetting himself] Let's come, Vi.
+
+VIOLET. [coldly, warning him with her eyes] I beg your pardon,
+Mr Malone, I did not quite catch--
+
+HECTOR. [recollecting himself] I ask to be allowed the pleasure
+of showing you my little American steam car, Miss Robinson.
+
+VIOLET. I shall be very pleased. [They go off together down the
+avenue].
+
+TANNER. About this trip, Straker.
+
+STRAKER. [preoccupied with the car] Yes?
+
+TANNER. Miss Whitefield is supposed to be coming with me.
+
+STRAKER. So I gather.
+
+TANNER. Mr Robinson is to be one of the party.
+
+STRAKER. Yes.
+
+TANNER. Well, if you can manage so as to be a good deal occupied
+with me, and leave Mr Robinson a good deal occupied with Miss
+Whitefield, he will be deeply grateful to you.
+
+STRAKER. [looking round at him] Evidently.
+
+TANNER. "Evidently"! Your grandfather would have simply winked.
+
+STRAKER. My grandfather would have touched his at.
+
+TANNER. And I should have given your good nice respectful
+grandfather a sovereign.
+
+STRAKER. Five shillins, more likely. [He leaves the car and
+approaches Tanner]. What about the lady's views?
+
+TANNER. She is just as willing to be left to Mr Robinson as Mr
+Robinson is to be left to her. [Straker looks at his principal
+with cool scepticism; then turns to the car whistling his
+favorite air]. Stop that aggravating noise. What do you mean by
+it? [Straker calmly resumes the melody and finishes it. Tanner
+politely hears it out before he again addresses Straker, this
+time with elaborate seriousness]. Enry: I have ever been a warm
+advocate of the spread of music among the masses; but I object to
+your obliging the company whenever Miss Whitefield's name is
+mentioned. You did it this morning, too.
+
+STRAKER. [obstinately] It's not a bit o use. Mr Robinson may as
+well give it up first as last.
+
+TANNER. Why?
+
+STRAKER. Garn! You know why. Course it's not my business; but you
+needn't start kiddin me about it.
+
+TANNER. I am not kidding. I don't know why.
+
+STRAKER. [Cheerfully sulky] Oh, very well. All right. It ain't my
+business.
+
+TANNER. [impressively] I trust, Enry, that, as between employer
+and engineer, I shall always know how to keep my proper distance,
+and not intrude my private affairs on you. Even our business
+arrangements are subject to the approval of your Trade Union. But
+don't abuse your advantages. Let me remind you that Voltaire said
+that what was too silly to be said could be sung.
+
+STRAKER. It wasn't Voltaire: it was Bow Mar Shay.
+
+TANNER. I stand corrected: Beaumarchais of course. Now you seem
+to think that what is too delicate to be said can be whistled.
+Unfortunately your whistling, though melodious, is unintelligible.
+Come! there's nobody listening: neither my genteel relatives nor
+the secretary of your confounded Union. As man to man, Enry, why
+do you think that my friend has no chance with Miss Whitefield?
+
+STRAKER. Cause she's arter summun else.
+
+TANNER. Bosh! who else?
+
+STRAKER. You.
+
+TANNER. Me!!!
+
+STRAKER. Mean to tell me you didn't know? Oh, come, Mr Tanner!
+
+TANNER. [in fierce earnest] Are you playing the fool, or do you
+mean it?
+
+STRAKER. [with a flash of temper] I'm not playin no fool. [More
+coolly] Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face. If you ain't
+spotted that, you don't know much about these sort of things.
+[Serene again] Ex-cuse me, you know, Mr Tanner; but you asked me
+as man to man; and I told you as man to man.
+
+TANNER. [wildly appealing to the heavens] Then I--I am the
+bee, the spider, the marked down victim, the destined prey.
+
+STRAKER. I dunno about the bee and the spider. But the marked
+down victim, that's what you are and no mistake; and a jolly good
+job for you, too, I should say.
+
+TANNER. [momentously] Henry Straker: the moment of your life has
+arrived.
+
+STRAKER. What d'y'mean?
+
+TANNER. That record to Biskra.
+
+STRAKER. [eagerly] Yes?
+
+TANNER. Break it.
+
+STRAKER. [rising to the height of his destiny] D'y'mean it?
+
+TANNER. I do.
+
+STRAKER. When?
+
+TANNER. Now. Is that machine ready to start?
+
+STRAKER. [quailing] But you can't--
+
+TANNER. [cutting him short by getting into the car] Off we go.
+First to the bank for money; then to my rooms for my kit; then to
+your rooms for your kit; then break the record from London to
+Dover or Folkestone; then across the channel and away like mad to
+Marseilles, Gibraltar, Genoa, any port from which we can sail to
+a Mahometan country where men are protected from women.
+
+STRAKER. Garn! you're kiddin.
+
+TANNER. [resolutely] Stay behind then. If you won't come I'll do
+it alone. [He starts the motor].
+
+STRAKER. [running after him] Here! Mister! arf a mo! steady on!
+[he scrambles in as the car plunges forward].
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+Evening in the Sierra Nevada. Rolling slopes of brown, with olive
+trees instead of apple trees in the cultivated patches, and
+occasional prickly pears instead of gorse and bracken in the
+wilds. Higher up, tall stone peaks and precipices, all handsome
+and distinguished. No wild nature here: rather a most
+aristocratic mountain landscape made by a fastidious
+artist-creator. No vulgar profusion of vegetation: even a touch
+of aridity in the frequent patches of stones: Spanish
+magnificence and Spanish economy everywhere.
+
+Not very far north of a spot at which the high road over one of
+the passes crosses a tunnel on the railway from Malaga to
+Granada, is one of the mountain amphitheatres of the Sierra.
+Looking at it from the wide end of the horse-shoe, one sees, a
+little to the right, in the face of the cliff, a romantic cave
+which is really an abandoned quarry, and towards the left a
+little hill, commanding a view of the road, which skirts the
+amphitheatre on the left, maintaining its higher level on
+embankments and on an occasional stone arch. On the hill,
+watching the road, is a man who is either a Spaniard or a
+Scotchman. Probably a Spaniard, since he wears the dress of a
+Spanish goatherd and seems at home in the Sierra Nevada, but
+very like a Scotchman for all that. In the hollow, on the slope
+leading to the quarry-cave, are about a dozen men who, as they
+recline at their cave round a heap of smouldering white ashes of
+dead leaf and brushwood, have an air of being conscious of
+themselves as picturesque scoundrels honoring the Sierra by
+using it as an effective pictorial background. As a matter of
+artistic fact they are not picturesque; and the mountains
+tolerate them as lions tolerate lice. An English policeman or
+Poor Law Guardian would recognize them as a selected band of
+tramps and ablebodied paupers.
+
+This description of them is not wholly contemptuous. Whoever has
+intelligently observed the tramp, or visited the ablebodied ward
+of a workhouse, will admit that our social failures are not all
+drunkards and weaklings. Some of them are men who do not fit the
+class they were born into. Precisely the same qualities that make
+the educated gentleman an artist may make an uneducated manual
+laborer an ablebodied pauper. There are men who fall helplessly
+into the workhouse because they are good far nothing; but there
+are also men who are there because they are strongminded enough
+to disregard the social convention (obviously not a disinterested
+one on the part of the ratepayer) which bids a man live by
+heavy and badly paid drudgery when he has the alternative of
+walking into the workhouse, announcing himself as a destitute
+person, and legally compelling the Guardians to feed, clothe and
+house him better than he could feed, clothe and house himself
+without great exertion. When a man who is born a poet refuses a
+stool in a stockbroker's office, and starves in a garret,
+spunging on a poor landlady or on his friends and relatives
+rather than work against his grain; or when a lady, because she
+is a lady, will face any extremity of parasitic dependence rather
+than take a situation as cook or parlormaid, we make large
+allowances for them. To such allowances the ablebodied pauper and
+his nomadic variant the tramp are equally entitled.
+
+Further, the imaginative man, if his life is to be tolerable to
+him, must have leisure to tell himself stories, and a position
+which lends itself to imaginative decoration. The ranks of
+unskilled labor offer no such positions. We misuse our laborers
+horribly; and when a man refuses to be misused, we have no right
+to say that he is refusing honest work. Let us be frank in this
+matter before we go on with our play; so that we may enjoy it
+without hypocrisy. If we were reasoning, farsighted people, four
+fifths of us would go straight to the Guardians for relief, and
+knock the whole social system to pieces with most beneficial
+reconstructive results. The reason we do got do this is because
+we work like bees or ants, by instinct or habit, not reasoning
+about the matter at all. Therefore when a man comes along who can
+and does reason, and who, applying the Kantian test to his
+conduct, can truly say to us, If everybody did as I do, the world
+would be compelled to reform itself industrially, and abolish
+slavery and squalor, which exist only because everybody does as
+you do, let us honor that man and seriously consider the
+advisability of following his example. Such a man is the
+able-bodied, able-minded pauper. Were he a gentleman doing his
+best to get a pension or a sinecure instead of sweeping a
+crossing, nobody would blame him; for deciding that so long as
+the alternative lies between living mainly at the expense of the
+community and allowing the community to live mainly at his, it
+would be folly to accept what is to him personally the greater of
+the two evils.
+
+We may therefore contemplate the tramps of the Sierra without
+prejudice, admitting cheerfully that our objects--briefly,
+to be gentlemen of fortune--are much the same as theirs, and the
+difference in our position and methods merely accidental. One
+or two of them, perhaps, it would be wiser to kill without malice
+in a friendly and frank manner; for there are bipeds, just as
+there are quadrupeds, who are too dangerous to be left unchained
+and unmuzzled; and these cannot fairly expect to have other men's
+lives wasted in the work of watching them. But as society has not
+the courage to kill them, and, when it catches them, simply
+wreaks on them some superstitious expiatory rites of torture and
+degradation, and than lets them loose with heightened
+qualifications for mischief; it is just as well that they are at
+large in the Sierra, and in the hands of a chief who looks as if
+he might possibly, on provocation, order them to be shot.
+
+This chief, seated in the centre of the group on a squared block
+of stone from the quarry, is a tall strong man, with a striking
+cockatoo nose, glossy black hair, pointed beard, upturned
+moustache, and a Mephistophelean affectation which is fairly
+imposing, perhaps because the scenery admits of a larger swagger
+than Piccadilly, perhaps because of a certain sentimentality in
+the man which gives him that touch of grace which alone can
+excuse deliberate picturesqueness. His eyes and mouth are by no
+means rascally; he has a fine voice and a ready wit; and whether
+he is really the strongest man in the party, or not, he looks it.
+He is certainly, the best fed, the best dressed, and the best
+trained. The fact that he speaks English is not unexpected in
+spite of the Spanish landscape; for with the exception of one man
+who might be guessed as a bullfighter ruined by drink and one
+unmistakable Frenchman, they are all cockney or American;
+therefore, in a land of cloaks and sombreros, they mostly wear
+seedy overcoats, woollen mufflers, hard hemispherical hats, and
+dirty brown gloves. Only a very few dress after their leader,
+whose broad sombrero with a cock's feather in the band, and
+voluminous cloak descending to his high boots, are as un-English
+as possible. None of them are armed; and the ungloved ones keep
+their hands in their pockets because it is their national belief
+that it must be dangerously cold in the open air with the night
+coming on. (It is as warm an evening as any reasonable man could
+desire).
+
+Except the bullfighting inebriate there is only one person in the
+company who looks more than, say, thirty-three. He is a small man
+with reddish whiskers, weak eyes, and the anxious look of a
+small tradesman in difficulties. He wears the only tall hat
+visible: it shines in the sunset with the sticky glow of some
+sixpenny patent hat reviver, often applied and constantly tending
+to produce a worse state of the original surface than the ruin it
+was applied to remedy. He has a collar and cuff of celluloid; and
+his brown Chesterfield overcoat, with velvet collar, is still
+presentable. He is pre-eminently the respectable man of the
+party, and is certainly over forty, possibly over fifty. He is
+the corner man on the leader's right, opposite three men in
+scarlet ties on his left. One of these three is the Frenchman. Of
+the remaining two, who are both English, one is argumentative,
+solemn, and obstinate; the other rowdy and mischievious.
+
+The chief, with a magnificent fling of the end of his cloak
+across his left shoulder, rises to address them. The applause
+which greets him shows that he is a favorite orator.
+
+THE CHIEF. Friends and fellow brigands. I have a proposal to make
+to this meeting. We have now spent three evenings in discussing
+the question Have Anarchists or Social-Democrats the most
+personal courage? We have gone into the principles of Anarchism
+and Social-Democracy at great length. The cause of Anarchy has
+been ably represented by our one Anarchist, who doesn't know what
+Anarchism means [laughter]--
+
+THE ANARCHIST. [rising] A point of order, Mendoza--
+
+MENDOZA. [forcibly] No, by thunder: your last point of order took
+half an hour. Besides, Anarchists don't believe in order.
+
+THE ANARCHIST. [mild, polite but persistent: he is, in fact, the
+respectable looking elderly man in the celluloid collar and
+cuffs] That is a vulgar error. I can prove--
+
+MENDOZA. Order, order.
+
+THE OTHERS [shouting] Order, order. Sit down. Chair! Shut up.
+
+The Anarchist is suppressed.
+
+MENDOZA. On the other hand we have three Social-Democrats among
+us. They are not on speaking terms; and they have put before us
+three distinct and incompatible views of Social-Democracy.
+
+THE MAJORITY. [shouting assent] Hear, hear! So we are. Right.
+
+THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [smarting under oppression] You ain't
+no Christian. You're a Sheeny, you are.
+
+MENDOZA. [with crushing magnanimity] My friend; I am an exception
+to all rules. It is true that I have the honor to be a Jew; and,
+when the Zionists need a leader to reassemble our race on its
+historic soil of Palestine, Mendoza will not be the last to
+volunteer [sympathetic applause--hear, hear, etc.]. But I am not
+a slave to any superstition. I have swallowed all the formulas,
+even that of Socialism; though, in a sense, once a Socialist,
+always a Socialist.
+
+THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!
+
+MENDOZA. But I am well aware that the ordinary man--even the
+ordinary brigand, who can scarcely be called an ordinary man
+[Hear, hear!]--is not a philosopher. Common sense is good enough
+for him; and in our business affairs common sense is good enough
+for me. Well, what is our business here in the Sierra Nevada,
+chosen by the Moors as the fairest spot in Spain? Is it to
+discuss abstruse questions of political economy? No: it is to
+hold up motor cars and secure a more equitable distribution of
+wealth.
+
+THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. All made by labor, mind you.
+
+MENDOZA. [urbanely] Undoubtedly. All made by labor, and on its
+way to be squandered by wealthy vagabonds in the dens of vice
+that disfigure the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. We
+intercept that wealth. We restore it to circulation among the
+class that produced it and that chiefly needs it--the working
+class. We do this at the risk of our lives and liberties, by the
+exercise of the virtues of courage, endurance, foresight, and
+abstinence--especially abstinence. I myself have eaten nothing
+but prickly pears and broiled rabbit for three days.
+
+THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. (Stubbornly] No more ain't we.
+
+MENDOZA. [indignantly] Have I taken more than my share?
+
+THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [unmoved] Why should you?
+
+THE ANARCHIST. Why should he not? To each according to his needs:
+from each according to his means.
+
+THE FRENCHMAN. [shaking his fist at the anarchist] Fumiste!
+
+MENDOZA. [diplomatically] I agree with both of you.
+
+THE GENUINELY ENGLISH BRIGANDS. Hear, hear! Bravo, Mendoza!
+
+MENDOZA. What I say is, let us treat one another as gentlemen,
+and strive to excel in personal courage only when we take the
+field.
+
+THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [derisively] Shikespear.
+
+A whistle comes from the goatherd on the hill. He springs up and
+points excitedly forward along the road to the north.
+
+THE GOATHERD. Automobile! Automobile! [He rushes down the hill
+and joins the rest, who all scramble to their feet].
+
+MENDOZA. [in ringing tones] To arms! Who has the gun?
+
+THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [handing a rifle to Mendoza] Here.
+
+MENDOZA. Have the nails been strewn in the road?
+
+THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEM0CRAT. Two ahnces of em.
+
+MENDOZA. Good! [To the Frenchman] With me, Duval. If the nails
+fail, puncture their tires with a bullet. [He gives the rifle to
+Duval, who follows him up the hill. Mendoza produces an opera
+glass. The others hurry across to the road and disappear to the
+north].
+
+MENDOZA. [on the hill, using his glass] Two only, a capitalist
+and his chauffeur. They look English.
+
+DUVAL. Angliche! Aoh yess. Cochons! [Handling the rifle] Faut
+tire, n'est-ce-pas?
+
+MENDOZA. No: the nails have gone home. Their tire is down: they
+stop.
+
+DUVAL. [shouting to the others] Fondez sur eux, nom de Dieu!
+
+MENDOZA. [rebuking his excitement] Du calme, Duval: keep your
+hair on. They take it quietly. Let us descend and receive them.
+
+Mendoza descends, passing behind the fire and coming forward,
+whilst Tanner and Straker, in their motoring goggles, leather
+coats, and caps, are led in from the road by brigands.
+
+TANNER. Is this the gentleman you describe as your boss? Does he
+speak English?
+
+THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Course he does. Y'don't suppowz we
+Hinglishmen lets ahrselves be bossed by a bloomin Spenniard, do
+you?
+
+MENDOZA. [with dignity] Allow me to introduce myself: Mendoza,
+President of the League of the Sierra! [Posing loftily] I am a
+brigand: I live by robbing the rich.
+
+TANNER. [promptly] I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.
+Shake hands.
+
+THE ENGLISH SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!
+
+General laughter and good humor. Tanner and Mendoza shake hands.
+The Brigands drop into their former places
+
+STRAKER. Ere! where do I come in?
+
+TANNER. [introducing] My friend and chauffeur.
+
+THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [suspiciously] Well, which is he?
+friend or show-foor? It makes all the difference you know.
+
+MENDOZA. [explaining] We should expect ransom for a friend. A
+professional chauffeur is free of the mountains. He even takes a
+trifling percentage of his princpal's ransom if he will honor us
+by accepting it.
+
+STRAKER. I see. Just to encourage me to come this way again.
+Well, I'll think about it.
+
+DUVAL. [impulsively rushing across to Straker] Mon frere! [He
+embraces him rapturously and kisses him on both cheeks].
+
+STRAKER. [disguested] Ere, git out: don't be silly. Who are you,
+pray?
+
+DUVAL. Duval: Social-Democrat.
+
+STRAKER. Oh, you're a Social-Democrat, are you?
+
+THE ANARCHIST. He means that he has sold out to the parliamentary
+humbugs and the bourgeoisie. Compromise! that is his faith.
+
+DUVAL. [furiously] I understand what he say. He say Bourgeois. He
+say Compromise. Jamais de la vie! Miserable menteur--
+
+STRAKER. See here, Captain Mendoza, ow much o this sort o thing
+do you put up with here? Are we avin a pleasure trip in the
+mountains, or are we at a Socialist meetin?
+
+THE MAJORITY. Hear, hear! Shut up. Chuck it. Sit down, etc. etc.
+[The Social-Democrats and the Anarchist are hurtled into the
+background. Straker, after superintending this proceeding with
+satisfaction, places himself on Mendoza's left, Tanner being on
+his right].
+
+MENDOZA. Can we offer you anything? Broiled rabbit and prickly
+pears--
+
+TANNER. Thank you: we have dined.
+
+MENDOZA. [to his followers] Gentlemen: business is over for the
+day. Go as you please until morning.
+
+The Brigands disperse into groups lazily. Some go into the cave.
+Others sit down or lie down to sleep in the open. A few produce a
+pack of cards and move off towards the road; for it is now
+starlight; and they know that motor cars have lamps which can be
+turned to account for lighting a card party.
+
+STRAKER. [calling after them] Don't none of you go fooling with
+that car, d'ye hear?
+
+MENDOZA. No fear, Monsieur le Chauffeur. The first one we
+captured cured us of that.
+
+STRAKER. [interested] What did it do?
+
+MENDOZA. It carried three brave comrades of ours, who did not
+know how to stop it, into Granada, and capsized them opposite the
+police station. Since then we never touch one without sending for
+the chauffeur. Shall we chat at our ease?
+
+TANNER. By all means.
+
+Tanner, Mendoza, and Straker sit down on the turf by the fire.
+Mendoza delicately waives his presidential dignity, of which the
+right to sit on the squared stone block is the appanage, by
+sitting on the ground like his guests, and using the stone only
+as a support for his back.
+
+MENDOZA. It is the custom in Spain always to put off business
+until to-morrow. In fact, you have arrived out of office hours.
+However, if you would prefer to settle the question of ransom at
+once, I am at your service.
+
+TANNER. To-morrow will do for me. I am rich enough to pay
+anything in reason.
+
+MENDOZA. [respectfully, much struck by this admission] You
+are a remarkable man, sir. Our guests usually describe themselves
+as miserably poor.
+
+TANNER. Pooh! Miserably poor people don't own motor cars.
+
+MENDOZA. Precisely what we say to them.
+
+TANNER. Treat us well: we shall not prove ungrateful.
+
+STRAKER. No prickly pears and broiled rabbits, you know. Don't
+tell me you can't do us a bit better than that if you like.
+
+MENDOZA. Wine, kids, milk, cheese and bread can be procured for
+ready money.
+
+STRAKER. [graciously] Now you're talking.
+
+TANNER. Are you all Socialists here, may I ask?
+
+MENDOZA. [repudiating this humiliating misconception] Oh no, no,
+no: nothing of the kind, I assure you. We naturally have modern
+views as to the justice of the existing distribution of wealth:
+otherwise we should lose our self-respect. But nothing that you
+could take exception to, except two or three faddists.
+
+TANNER. I had no intention of suggesting anything discreditable.
+In fact, I am a bit of a Socialist myself.
+
+STRAKER. [drily] Most rich men are, I notice.
+
+MENDOZA. Quite so. It has reached us, I admit. It is in the air
+of the century.
+
+STRAKER. Socialism must be looking up a bit if your chaps are
+taking to it.
+
+MENDOZA. That is true, sir. A movement which is confined to
+philosophers and honest men can never exercise any real political
+influence: there are too few of them. Until a movement shows
+itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never hope for
+a political majority.
+
+TANNER. But are your brigands any less honest than ordinary
+citizens?
+
+MENDOZA. Sir: I will be frank with you. Brigandage is abnormal.
+Abnormal professions attract two classes: those who are not good
+enough for ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good for
+it. We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum
+very superior.
+
+STRAKER. Take care! some o the dregs'll hear you.
+
+MENDOZA. It does not matter: each brigand thinks himself scum,
+and likes to hear the others called dregs.
+
+TANNER. Come! you are a wit. [Mendoza inclines his head,
+flattered]. May one ask you a blunt question?
+
+MENDOZA. As blunt as you please.
+
+TANNER. How does it pay a man of your talent to shepherd such a
+flock as this on broiled rabbit and prickly pears? I have seen
+men less gifted, and I'll swear less honest, supping at the Savoy
+on foie gras and champagne.
+
+MENDOZA. Pooh! they have all had their turn at the broiled
+rabbit, just as I shall have my turn at the Savoy. Indeed, I have
+had a turn there already--as waiter.
+
+TANNER. A waiter! You astonish me!
+
+MENDOZA. [reflectively] Yes: I, Mendoza of the Sierra, was a
+waiter. Hence, perhaps, my cosmopolitanism. [With sudden
+intensity] Shall I tell you the story of my life?
+
+STRAKER. [apprehensively] If it ain't too long, old chap--
+
+TANNER. [interrupting him] Tsh-sh: you are a Philistine, Henry:
+you have no romance in you. [To Mendoza] You interest me
+extremely, President. Never mind Henry: he can go to sleep.
+
+MENDOZA. The woman I loved--
+
+STRAKER. Oh, this is a love story, is it? Right you are. Go on: I
+was only afraid you were going to talk about yourself.
+
+MENDOZA. Myself! I have thrown myself away for her sake: that is
+why I am here. No matter: I count the world well lost for her.
+She had, I pledge you my word, the most magnificent head of hair
+I ever saw. She had humor; she had intellect; she could cook to
+perfection; and her highly strung temperament made her uncertain,
+incalculable, variable, capricious, cruel, in a word, enchanting.
+
+STRAKER. A six shillin novel sort o woman, all but the cookin. Er
+name was Lady Gladys Plantagenet, wasn't it?
+
+MENDOZA. No, sir: she was not an earl's daughter. Photography,
+reproduced by the half-tone process, has made me familiar with
+the appearance of the daughters of the English peerage; and I can
+honestly say that I would have sold the lot, faces, dowries,
+clothes, titles, and all, for a smile from this woman. Yet she
+was a woman of the people, a worker: otherwise--let me
+reciprocate your bluntness--I should have scorned her.
+
+TANNER. Very properly. And did she respond to your love?
+
+MENDOZA. Should I be here if she did? She objected to marry a
+Jew.
+
+TANNER. On religious grounds?
+
+MENDOZA. No: she was a freethinker. She said that every Jew
+considers in his heart that English people are dirty in their
+habits.
+
+TANNER. [surprised] Dirty!
+
+MENDOZA. It showed her extraordinary knowledge of the world; for
+it is undoubtedly true. Our elaborate sanitary code makes us
+unduly contemptuous of the Gentile.
+
+TANNER. Did you ever hear that, Henry?
+
+STRAKER. I've heard my sister say so. She was cook in a Jewish
+family once.
+
+MENDOZA. I could not deny it; neither could I eradicate the
+impression it made on her mind. I could have got round any other
+objection; but no woman can stand a suspicion of indelicacy as to
+her person. My entreaties were in vain: she always retorted that
+she wasn't good enough for me, and recommended me to marry an
+accursed barmaid named Rebecca Lazarus, whom I loathed. I talked
+of suicide: she offered me a packet of beetle poison to do it
+with. I hinted at murder: she went into hysterics; and as I am a
+living man I went to America so that she might sleep without
+dreaming that I was stealing upstairs to cut her throat. In
+America I went out west and fell in with a man who was wanted by
+the police for holding up trains. It was he who had the idea of
+holding up motors cars--in the South of Europe: a welcome idea to
+a desperate and disappointed man. He gave me some valuable
+introductions to capitalists of the right sort. I formed a
+syndicate; and the present enterprise is the result. I became
+leader, as the Jew always becomes leader, by his brains and
+imagination. But with all my pride of race I would give
+everything I possess to be an Englishman. I am like a boy: I cut
+her name on the trees and her initials on the sod. When I am
+alone I lie down and tear my wretched hair and cry Louisa--
+
+STRAKER. [startled] Louisa!
+
+MENDOZA. It is her name--Louisa--Louisa Straker--
+
+TANNER. Straker!
+
+STRAKER. [scrambling up on his knees most indignantly] Look here:
+Louisa Straker is my sister, see? Wot do you mean by gassin about
+her like this? Wot she got to do with you?
+
+MENDOZA. A dramatic coincidence! You are Enry, her favorite
+brother!
+
+STRAKER. Oo are you callin Enry? What call have you to take a
+liberty with my name or with hers? For two pins I'd punch your
+fat ed, so I would.
+
+MENDOZA. [with grandiose calm] If I let you do it, will you
+promise to brag of it afterwards to her? She will be reminded of
+her Mendoza: that is all I desire.
+
+TANNER. This is genuine devotion, Henry. You should respect it.
+
+STRAKER. [fiercely] Funk, more likely.
+
+MENDOZA. [springing to his feet] Funk! Young man: I come of a
+famous family of fighters; and as your sister well knows, you
+would have as much chance against me as a perambulator against
+your motor car.
+
+STRAKER. [secretly daunted, but rising from his knees with an air
+of reckless pugnacity] I ain't afraid of you. With your Louisa!
+Louisa! Miss Straker is good enough for you, I should think.
+
+MENDOZA. I wish you could persuade her to think so.
+
+STRAKER. [exasperated] Here--
+
+TANNER. [rising quickly and interposing] Oh come, Henry: even if
+you could fight the President you can't fight the whole League of
+the Sierra. Sit down again and be friendly. A cat may look at a
+king; and even a President of brigands may look at your sister.
+All this family pride is really very old fashioned.
+
+STRAKER. [subdued, but grumbling] Let him look at her. But wot
+does he mean by makin out that she ever looked at im?
+[Reluctantly resuming his couch on the turf] Ear him talk, one ud
+think she was keepin company with him. [He turns his back on them
+and composes himself to sleep].
+
+MENDOZA. [to Tanner, becoming more confidential as he finds
+himself virtually alone with a sympathetic listener in the still
+starlight of the mountains; for all the rest are asleep by this
+time] It was just so with her, sir. Her intellect reached forward
+into the twentieth century: her social prejudices and family
+affections reached back into the dark ages. Ah, sir, how the
+words of Shakespear seem to fit every crisis in our emotions!
+
+      I loved Louisa: 40,000 brothers
+      Could not with all their quantity of love
+      Make up my sum.
+
+And so on. I forget the rest. Call it madness if you will--
+infatuation. I am an able man, a strong man: in ten years I
+should have owned a first-class hotel. I met her; and you see! I
+am a brigand, an outcast. Even Shakespear cannot do justice to
+what I feel for Louisa. Let me read you some lines that I have
+written about her myself. However slight their literary merit may
+be, they express what I feel better than any casual words can.
+[He produces a packet of hotel bills scrawled with manuscript,
+and kneels at the fire to decipher them, poking it with a stick
+to make it glow].
+
+TANNER. [clapping him rudely on the shoulder] Put them in the
+fire, President.
+
+MENDOZA. [startled] Eh?
+
+TANNER. You are sacrificing your career to a monomania.
+
+MENDOZA. I know it.
+
+TANNER. No you don't. No man would commit such a crime against
+himself if he really knew what he was doing. How can you look
+round at these august hills, look up at this divine sky, taste
+this finely tempered air, and then talk like a literary hack on a
+second floor in Bloomsbury?
+
+MENDOZA. [shaking his head] The Sierra is no better than
+Bloomsbury when once the novelty has worn off. Besides, these
+mountains make you dream of women--of women with magnificent
+hair.
+
+TANNER. Of Louisa, in short. They will not make me dream of
+women, my friend: I am heartwhole.
+
+MENDOZA. Do not boast until morning, sir. This is a strange
+country for dreams.
+
+TANNER. Well, we shall see. Goodnight. [He lies down and composes
+himself to sleep].
+
+Mendoza, with a sigh, follows his example; and for a few moments
+there is peace in the Sierra. Then Mendoza sits up suddenly and
+says pleadingly to Tanner--
+
+MENDOZA. Just allow me to read a few lines before you go to
+sleep. I should really like your opinion of them.
+
+TANNER. [drowsily] Go on. I am listening.
+
+MENDOZA.  I saw thee first in Whitsun week
+          Louisa, Louisa--
+
+TANNER. [roaring himself] My dear President, Louisa is a
+very pretty name; but it really doesn't rhyme well to Whitsun
+week.
+
+MENDOZA. Of course not. Louisa is not the rhyme, but the refrain.
+
+TANNER. [subsiding] Ah, the refrain. I beg your pardon. Go on.
+
+MENDOZA. Perhaps you do not care for that one: I think you will
+like this better. [He recites, in rich soft tones, and to slow
+time]
+
+          Louisa, I love thee.
+          I love thee, Louisa.
+          Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I love thee.
+          One name and one phrase make my music,
+          Louisa. Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I love thee.
+
+
+          Mendoza thy lover,
+          Thy lover, Mendoza,
+          Mendoza adoringly lives for Louisa.
+          There's nothing but that in the world for Mendoza.
+          Louisa, Louisa, Mendoza adores thee.
+
+[Affected] There is no merit in producing beautiful lines upon
+such a name. Louisa is an exquisite name, is it not?
+
+TANNER. [all but asleep, responds with a faint groan].
+
+MENDOZA.  O wert thou, Louisa,
+          The wife of Mendoza,
+          Mendoza's Louisa, Louisa Mendoza,
+          How blest were the life of Louisa's Mendoza!
+          How painless his longing of love for Louisa!
+
+That is real poetry--from the heart--from the heart of hearts.
+Don't you think it will move her?
+
+No answer.
+
+[Resignedly] Asleep, as usual. Doggrel to all the world; heavenly
+music to me! Idiot that I am to wear my heart on my sleeve! [He
+composes himself to sleep, murmuring] Louisa, I love thee; I love
+thee, Louisa; Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I--
+
+Straker snores; rolls over on his side; and relapses into sleep.
+Stillness settles on the Sierra; and the darkness deepens. The
+fire has again buried itself in white ash and ceased to glow. The
+peaks show unfathomably dark against the starry firmament; but
+now the stars dim and vanish; and the sky seems to steal away out
+of the universe. Instead of the Sierra there is nothing;
+omnipresent nothing. No sky, no peaks, no light, no sound, no
+time nor space, utter void. Then somewhere the beginning of a
+pallor, and with it a faint throbbing buzz as of a ghostly
+violoncello palpitating on the same note endlessly. A couple of
+ghostly violins presently take advantage of this bass
+
+(a staff of music is supplied here)
+
+and therewith the pallor reveals a man in the void, an
+incorporeal but visible man, seated, absurdly enough, on nothing.
+For a moment he raises his head as the music passes him by. Then,
+with a heavy sigh, he droops in utter dejection; and the violins,
+discouraged, retrace their melody in despair and at last give it
+up, extinguished by wailings from uncanny wind instruments,
+thus:--
+
+(more music)
+
+It is all very odd. One recognizes the Mozartian strain;
+and on this hint, and by the aid of certain sparkles of violet
+light in the pallor, the man's costume explains itself as that of
+a Spanish nobleman of the XV-XVI century. Don Juan, of
+course; but where? why? how? Besides, in the brief lifting
+of his face, now hidden by his hat brim, there was a curious
+suggestion of Tanner. A more critical, fastidious, handsome face,
+paler and colder, without Tanner's impetuous credulity and
+enthusiasm, and without a touch of his modern plutocratic
+vulgarity, but still a resemblance, even an identity. The name
+too: Don Juan Tenorio, John Tanner. Where on earth---or elsewhere
+--have we got to from the XX century and the Sierra?
+
+Another pallor in the void, this time not violet, but a
+disagreeable smoky yellow. With it, the whisper of a ghostly
+clarionet turning this tune into infinite sadness:
+
+(Here there is another musical staff.)
+
+The yellowish pallor moves: there is an old crone wandering in
+the void, bent and toothless; draped, as well as one can guess,
+in the coarse brown frock of some religious order. She wanders
+and wanders in her slow hopeless way, much as a wasp flies in its
+rapid busy way, until she blunders against the thing she seeks:
+companionship. With a sob of relief the poor old creature
+clutches at the presence of the man and addresses him in her dry
+unlovely voice, which can still express pride and resolution as
+well as suffering.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Excuse me; but I am so lonely; and this place is
+so awful.
+
+DON JUAN. A new comer?
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Yes: I suppose I died this morning. I confessed; I
+had extreme unction; I was in bed with my family about me and my
+eyes fixed on the cross. Then it grew dark; and when the light
+came back it was this light by which I walk seeing nothing. I
+have wandered for hours in horrible loneliness.
+
+DON JUAN. [sighing] Ah! you have not yet lost the sense of time.
+One soon does, in eternity.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Where are we?
+
+DON JUAN. In hell.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN [proudly] Hell! I in hell! How dare you?
+
+DON JUAN. [unimpressed] Why not, Senora?
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. You do not know to whom you are speaking. I am a
+lady, and a faithful daughter of the Church.
+
+DON JUAN. I do not doubt it.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. But how then can I be in hell? Purgatory, perhaps:
+I have not been perfect: who has? But hell! oh, you are lying.
+
+DON JUAN. Hell, Senora, I assure you; hell at its best that is,
+its most solitary--though perhaps you would prefer company.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. But I have sincerely repented; I have confessed.
+
+DON JUAN. How much?
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. More sins than I really committed. I loved
+confession.
+
+DON JUAN. Ah, that is perhaps as bad as confessing too little. At
+all events, Senora, whether by oversight or intention, you are
+certainly damned, like myself; and there is nothing for it now
+but to make the best of it.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN [indignantly] Oh! and I might have been so much
+wickeder! All my good deeds wasted! It is unjust.
+
+DON JUAN. No: you were fully and clearly warned. For your bad
+deeds, vicarious atonement, mercy without justice. For your good
+deeds, justice without mercy. We have many good people here.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Were you a good man?
+
+DON JUAN. I was a murderer.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. A murderer! Oh, how dare they send me to herd with
+murderers! I was not as bad as that: I was a good woman. There is
+some mistake: where can I have it set right?
+
+DON JUAN. I do not know whether mistakes can be corrected here.
+Probably they will not admit a mistake even if they have made
+one.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. But whom can I ask?
+
+DON JUAN. I should ask the Devil, Senora: he understands the ways
+of this place, which is more than I ever could.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. The Devil! I speak to the Devil!
+
+DON JUAN. In hell, Senora, the Devil is the leader of the best
+society.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. I tell you, wretch, I know I am not in hell.
+
+DON JUAN. How do you know?
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Because I feel no pain.
+
+DON JUAN. Oh, then there is no mistake: you are intentionally
+damned.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Why do you say that?
+
+DON JUAN. Because hell, Senora, is a place for the wicked. The
+wicked are quite comfortable in it: it was made for them. You
+tell me you feel no pain. I conclude you are one of those for
+whom Hell exists.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Do you feel no pain?
+
+DON JUAN. I am not one of the wicked, Senora; therefore it bores
+me, bores me beyond description, beyond belief.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Not one of the wicked! You said you were a
+murderer.
+
+DON JUAN. Only a duel. I ran my sword through an old man who was
+trying to run his through me.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. If you were a gentleman, that was not a murder.
+
+DON JUAN. The old man called it murder, because he was, he said,
+defending his daughter's honor. By this he meant that because I
+foolishly fell in love with her and told her so, she screamed;
+and he tried to assassinate me after calling me insulting names.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. You were like all men. Libertines and murderers
+all, all, all!
+
+DON JUAN. And yet we meet here, dear lady.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Listen to me. My father was slain by just such a
+wretch as you, in just such a duel, for just such a cause. I
+screamed: it was my duty. My father drew on my assailant: his
+honor demanded it. He fell: that was the reward of honor. I am
+here: in hell, you tell me that is the reward of duty. Is there
+justice in heaven?
+
+DON JUAN. No; but there is justice in hell: heaven is far above
+such idle human personalities. You will be welcome in hell,
+Senora. Hell is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of
+the seven deadly virtues. All the wickedness on earth is done in
+their name: where else but in hell should they have their reward?
+Have I not told you that the truly damned are those who are happy
+in hell?
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. And are you happy here?
+
+DON JUAN. [Springing to his feet] No; and that is the enigma on
+which I ponder in darkness. Why am I here? I, who repudiated all
+duty, trampled honor underfoot, and laughed at justice!
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, what do I care why you are here? Why am I
+here? I, who sacrificed all my inclinations to womanly virtue and
+propriety!
+
+DON JUAN. Patience, lady: you will be perfectly happy and at home
+here. As with the poet, "Hell is a city much like Seville."
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Happy! here! where I am nothing! where I am
+nobody!
+
+DON JUAN. Not at all: you are a lady; and wherever ladies are is
+hell. Do not be surprised or terrified: you will find everything
+here that a lady can desire, including devils who will serve you
+from sheer love of servitude, and magnify your importance for the
+sake of dignifying their service--the best of servants.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. My servants will be devils.
+
+DON JUAN. Have you ever had servants who were not devils?
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Never: they were devils, perfect devils, all of
+them. But that is only a manner of speaking. I thought you meant
+that my servants here would be real devils.
+
+DON JUAN. No more real devils than you will be a real lady.
+Nothing is real here. That is the horror of damnation.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, this is all madness. This is worse than fire
+and the worm.
+
+DON JUAN. For you, perhaps, there are consolations. For instance:
+how old were you when you changed from time to eternity?
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Do not ask me how old I was as if I were a thing
+of the past. I am 77.
+
+DON JUAN. A ripe age, Senora. But in hell old age is not
+tolerated. It is too real. Here we worship Love and Beauty. Our
+souls being entirely damned, we cultivate our hearts. As a lady
+of 77, you would not have a single acquaintance in hell.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. How can I help my age, man?
+
+DON JUAN. You forget that you have left your age behind you in
+the realm of time. You are no more 77 than you are 7 or 17 or 27.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Nonsense!
+
+DON JUAN. Consider, Senora: was not this true even when you lived
+on earth? When you were 70, were you really older underneath your
+wrinkles and your grey hams than when you were 30?
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. No, younger: at 30 I was a fool. But of what use
+is it to feel younger and look older?
+
+DON JUAN. You see, Senora, the look was only an illusion. Your
+wrinkles lied, just as the plump smooth skin of many a stupid
+girl of 17, with heavy spirits and decrepit ideas, lies about her
+age? Well, here we have no bodies: we see each other as bodies
+only because we learnt to think about one another under that
+aspect when we were alive; and we still think in that way,
+knowing no other. But we can appear to one another at what age we
+choose. You have but to will any of your old looks back, and back
+they will come.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. It cannot be true.
+
+DON JUAN. Try.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. Seventeen!
+
+DON JUAN. Stop. Before you decide, I had better tell you that
+these things are a matter of fashion. Occasionally we have a rage
+for 17; but it does not last long. Just at present the
+fashionable age is 40--or say 37; but there are signs of a
+change. If you were at all good-looking at 27, I should suggest
+your trying that, and setting a new fashion.
+
+THE OLD WOMAN. I do not believe a word you are saying. However,
+27 be it. [Whisk! the old woman becomes a young one, and so
+handsome that in the radiance into which her dull yellow halo has
+suddenly lightened one might almost mistake her for Ann
+Whitefield].
+
+DON JUAN. Dona Ana de Ulloa!
+
+ANA. What? You know me!
+
+DON JUAN. And you forget me!
+
+ANA. I cannot see your face. [He raises his hat]. Don Juan
+Tenorio! Monster! You who slew my father! even here you pursue
+me.
+
+DON JUAN. I protest I do not pursue you. Allow me to withdraw
+[going].
+
+ANA. [reining his arm] You shall not leave me alone in this
+dreadful place.
+
+DON JUAN. Provided my staying be not interpreted as pursuit.
+
+ANA. [releasing him] You may well wonder how I can endure your
+presence. My dear, dear father!
+
+DON JUAN. Would you like to see him?
+
+ANA. My father HERE!!!
+
+DON JUAN. No: he is in heaven.
+
+ANA. I knew it. My noble father! He is looking down on us now.
+What must he feel to see his daughter in this place, and in
+conversation with his murderer!
+
+DON JUAN. By the way, if we should meet him--
+
+ANA. How can we meet him? He is in heaven.
+
+DON JUAN. He condescends to look in upon us here from time to
+time. Heaven bores him. So let me warn you that if you meet him
+he will be mortally offended if you speak of me as his murderer!
+He maintains that he was a much better swordsman than I, and that
+if his foot had not slipped he would have killed me. No doubt he
+is right: I was not a good fencer. I never dispute the point; so
+we are excellent friends.
+
+ANA. It is no dishonor to a soldier to be proud of his skill in
+arms.
+
+DON JUAN. You would rather not meet him, probably.
+
+ANA. How dare you say that?
+
+DON JUAN. Oh, that is the usual feeling here. You may remember
+that on earth--though of course we never confessed it--the death
+of anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled
+with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them.
+
+ANA. Monster! Never, never.
+
+DON JUAN. [placidly] I see you recognize the feeling. Yes: a
+funeral was always a festivity in black, especially the funeral
+of a relative. At all events, family ties are rarely kept up
+here. Your father is quite accustomed to this: he will not expect
+any devotion from you.
+
+ANA. Wretch: I wore mourning for him all my life.
+
+DON JUAN. Yes: it became you. But a life of mourning is one
+thing: an eternity of it quite another. Besides, here you are as
+dead as he. Can anything be more ridiculous than one dead person
+mourning for another? Do not look shocked, my dear Ana; and do
+not be alarmed: there is plenty of humbug in hell (indeed there
+is hardly anything else); but the humbug of death and age and
+change is dropped because here WE are all dead and all eternal.
+You will pick up our ways soon.
+
+ANA. And will all the men call me their dear Ana?
+
+DON JUAN. No. That was a slip of the tongue. I beg your pardon.
+
+ANA. [almost tenderly] Juan: did you really love me when you
+behaved so disgracefully to me?
+
+DON JUAN. [impatiently]] Oh, I beg you not to begin talking about
+love. Here they talk of nothing else but love--its beauty, its
+holiness, its spirituality, its devil knows what!--excuse me; but
+it does so bore me. They don't know what they're talking about. I
+do. They think they have achieved the perfection of love because
+they have no bodies. Sheer imaginative debauchery! Faugh!
+
+ANA. Has even death failed to refine your soul, Juan? Has the
+terrible judgment of which my father's statue was the minister
+taught you no reverence?
+
+DON JUAN. How is that very flattering statue, by the way? Does it
+still come to supper with naughty people and cast them into this
+bottomless pit?
+
+ANA. It has been a great expense to me. The boys in the monastery
+school would not let it alone: the mischievous ones broke it; and
+the studious ones wrote their names on it. Three new noses in two
+years, and fingers without end. I had to leave it to its fate at
+last; and now I fear it is shockingly mutilated. My poor father!
+
+DON JUAN. Hush! Listen! [Two great chords rolling on syncopated
+waves of sound break forth: D minor and its dominant: a round of
+dreadful joy to all musicians]. Ha! Mozart's statue music. It is
+your father. You had better disappear until I prepare him. [She
+vanishes].
+
+>From the void comes a living statue of white marble, designed
+to represent a majestic old man. But he waives his majesty with
+infinite grace; walks with a feather-like step; and makes every
+wrinkle in his war worn visage brim over with holiday joyousness.
+To his sculptor he owes a perfectly trained figure, which he
+carries erect and trim; and the ends of his moustache curl up,
+elastic as watchsprings, giving him an air which, but for its
+Spanish dignity, would be called jaunty. He is on the pleasantest
+terms with Don Juan. His voice, save for a much more
+distinguished intonation, is so like the voice of Roebuck Ramsden
+that it calls attention to the fact that they are not unlike one
+another in spite of their very different fashion of shaving.
+
+DON JUAN. Ah, here you are, my friend. Why don't you learn to
+sing the splendid music Mozart has written for you?
+
+THE STATUE. Unluckily he has written it for a bass voice. Mine is
+a counter tenor. Well: have you repented yet?
+
+DON JUAN. I have too much consideration for you to repent, Don
+Gonzalo. If I did, you would have no excuse for coming from
+Heaven to argue with me.
+
+THE STATUE. True. Remain obdurate, my boy. I wish I had killed
+you, as I should have done but for an accident. Then I should
+have come here; and you would have had a statue and a reputation
+for piety to live up to. Any news?
+
+DON JUAN. Yes: your daughter is dead.
+
+THE STATUE. [puzzled] My daughter? [Recollecting] Oh! the one you
+were taken with. Let me see: what was her name?
+
+DON JUAN. Ana.
+
+THE STATUE. To be sure: Ana. A goodlooking girl, if I recollect
+aright. Have you warned Whatshisname--her husband?
+
+DON JUAN. My friend Ottavio? No: I have not seen him since Ana
+arrived.
+
+Ana comes indignantly to light.
+
+ANA. What does this mean? Ottavio here and YOUR friend! And you,
+father, have forgotten my name. You are indeed turned to stone.
+
+THE STATUE. My dear: I am so much more admired in marble than I
+ever was in my own person that I have retained the shape the
+sculptor gave me. He was one of the first men of his day: you
+must acknowledge that.
+
+ANA. Father! Vanity! personal vanity! from you!
+
+THE STATUE. Ah, you outlived that weakness, my daughter: you must
+be nearly 80 by this time. I was cut off (by an accident) in my
+64th year, and am considerably your junior in consequence.
+Besides, my child, in this place, what our libertine friend here
+would call the farce of parental wisdom is dropped. Regard me, I
+beg, as a fellow creature, not as a father.
+
+ANA. You speak as this villain speaks.
+
+THE STATUE. Juan is a sound thinker, Ana. A bad fencer, but a
+sound thinker.
+
+ANA. [horror creeping upon her] I begin to understand. These are
+devils, mocking me. I had better pray.
+
+THE STATUE. [consoling her] No, no, no, my child: do not pray. If
+you do, you will throw away the main advantage of this place.
+Written over the gate here are the words "Leave every hope
+behind, ye who enter." Only think what a relief that is! For what
+is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope,
+and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by
+praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in
+short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse
+yourself. [Don Juan sighs deeply]. You sigh, friend Juan; but if
+you dwelt in heaven, as I do, you would realize your advantages.
+
+DON JUAN. You are in good spirits to-day, Commander. You are
+positively brilliant. What is the matter?
+
+THE STATUE. I have come to a momentous decision, my boy. But
+first, where is our friend the Devil? I must consult him in the
+matter. And Ana would like to make his acquaintance, no doubt.
+
+ANA. You are preparing some torment for me.
+
+DON JUAN. All that is superstition, Ana. Reassure yourself.
+Remember: the devil is not so black as he is painted.
+
+THE STATUE. Let us give him a call.
+
+At the wave of the statue's hand the great chords roll out again
+but this time Mozart's music gets grotesquely adulterated with
+Gounod's. A scarlet halo begins to glow; and into it the Devil
+rises, very Mephistophelean, and not at all unlike Mendoza,
+though not so interesting. He looks older; is getting prematurely
+bald; and, in spite of an effusion of goodnature and friendliness,
+is peevish and sensitive when his advances are not reciprocated.
+He does not inspire much confidence in his powers of hard work or
+endurance, and is, on the whole, a disagreeably self-indulgent
+looking person; but he is clever and plausible, though
+perceptibly less well bred than the two other men, and enormously
+less vital than the woman.
+
+THE DEVIL. [heartily] Have I the pleasure of again receiving a
+visit from the illustrious Commander of Calatrava? [Coldly] Don
+Juan, your servant. [Politely] And a strange lady? My respects,
+Senora.
+
+ANA. Are you--
+
+THE DEVIL. [bowing] Lucifer, at your service.
+
+ANA. I shall go mad.
+
+THE DEVIL. [gallantly] Ah, Senora, do not be anxious. You come to
+us from earth, full of the prejudices and terrors of that
+priest-ridden place. You have heard me ill spoken of; and yet,
+believe me, I have hosts of friends there.
+
+ANA. Yes: you reign in their hearts.
+
+THE DEVIL. [shaking his head] You flatter me, Senora; but you are
+mistaken. It is true that the world cannot get on without me; but
+it never gives me credit for that: in its heart it mistrusts and
+hates me. Its sympathies are all with misery, with poverty, with
+starvation of the body and of the heart. I call on it to
+sympathize with joy, with love, with happiness, with beauty.
+
+DON JUAN. [nauseated] Excuse me: I am going. You know I cannot
+stand this.
+
+THE DEVIL. [angrily] Yes: I know that you are no friend of mine.
+
+THE STATUE. What harm is he doing you, Juan? It seems to me that
+he was talking excellent sense when you interrupted him.
+
+THE DEVIL. [warmly shaking the statue's hand] Thank you, my
+friend: thank you. You have always understood me: he has always
+disparaged and avoided me.
+
+DON JUAN. I have treated you with perfect courtesy.
+
+THE DEVIL. Courtesy! What is courtesy? I care nothing for mere
+courtesy. Give me warmth of heart, true sincerity, the bond of
+sympathy with love and joy--
+
+DON JUAN. You are making me ill.
+
+THE DEVIL. There! [Appealing to the statue] You hear, sir! Oh, by
+what irony of fate was this cold selfish egotist sent to my
+kingdom, and you taken to the icy mansions of the sky!
+
+THE STATUE. I can't complain. I was a hypocrite; and it served me
+right to be sent to heaven.
+
+THE DEVIL. Why, sir, do you not join us, and leave a sphere for
+which your temperament is too sympathetic, your heart too warm,
+your capacity for enjoyment too generous?
+
+THE STATUE. I have this day resolved to do so. In future,
+excellent Son of the Morning, I am yours. I have left Heaven for
+ever.
+
+THE DEVIL. [again grasping his hand] Ah, what an honor for me!
+What a triumph for our cause! Thank you, thank you. And now, my
+friend--I may call you so at last--could you not persuade HIM
+to take the place you have left vacant above?
+
+THE STATUE. [shaking his head] I cannot conscientiously recommend
+anybody with whom I am on friendly terms to deliberately make
+himself dull and uncomfortable.
+
+THE DEVIL. Of course not; but are you sure HE would be
+uncomfortable? Of course you know best: you brought him here
+originally; and we had the greatest hopes of him. His sentiments
+were in the best taste of our best people. You remember how he
+sang? [He begins to sing in a nasal operatic baritone, tremulous
+from an eternity of misuse in the French manner].
+
+      Vivan le femmine!
+      Viva il buon vino!
+
+THE STATUE. [taking up the tune an octave higher in his counter
+tenor]
+
+      Sostegno a gloria
+      D'umanita.
+
+THE DEVIL. Precisely. Well, he never sings for us now.
+
+DON JUAN. Do you complain of that? Hell is full of musical
+amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost
+soul be permitted to abstain?
+
+THE DEVIL. You dare blaspheme against the sublimest of the arts!
+
+DON JUAN. [with cold disgust] You talk like a hysterical woman
+fawning on a fiddler.
+
+THE DEVIL. I am not angry. I merely pity you. You have no soul;
+and you are unconscious of all that you lose. Now you, Senor
+Commander, are a born musician. How well you sing! Mozart would
+be delighted if he were still here; but he moped and went to
+heaven. Curious how these clever men, whom you would have
+supposed born to be popular here, have turned out social
+failures, like Don Juan!
+
+DON JUAN. I am really very sorry to be a social failure.
+
+THE DEVIL. Not that we don't admire your intellect, you know. We
+do. But I look at the matter from your own point of view. You
+don't get on with us. The place doesn't suit you. The truth is,
+you have--I won't say no heart; for we know that beneath all your
+affected cynicism you have a warm one.
+
+DON JUAN. [shrinking] Don't, please don't.
+
+THE DEVIL. [nettled] Well, you've no capacity for enjoyment. Will
+that satisfy you?
+
+DON JUAN. It is a somewhat less insufferable form of cant than
+the other. But if you'll allow me, I'll take refuge, as usual, in
+solitude.
+
+THE DEVIL. Why not take refuge in Heaven? That's the proper place
+for you. [To Ana] Come, Senora! could you not persuade him for
+his own good to try a change of air?
+
+ANA. But can he go to Heaven if he wants to?
+
+THE DEVIL. What's to prevent him?
+
+ANA. Can anybody--can I go to Heaven if I want to?
+
+THE DEVIL. [rather contemptuously] Certainly, if your taste lies
+that way.
+
+ANA. But why doesn't everybody go to Heaven, then?
+
+THE STATUE. [chuckling] I can tell you that, my dear. It's
+because heaven is the most angelically dull place in all
+creation: that's why.
+
+THE DEVIL. His excellency the Commander puts it with military
+bluntness; but the strain of living in Heaven is intolerable.
+There is a notion that I was turned out of it; but as a matter of
+fact nothing could have induced me to stay there. I simply left
+it and organized this place.
+
+THE STATUE. I don't wonder at it. Nobody could stand an eternity
+of heaven.
+
+THE DEVIL. Oh, it suits some people. Let us be just, Commander:
+it is a question of temperament. I don't admire the heavenly
+temperament: I don't understand it: I don't know that I
+particularly want to understand it; but it takes all sorts to
+make a universe. There is no accounting for tastes: there are
+people who like it. I think Don Juan would like it.
+
+DON JUAN. But--pardon my frankness--could you really go back
+there if you desired to; or are the grapes sour?
+
+THE DEVIL. Back there! I often go back there. Have you never read
+the book of Job? Have you any canonical authority for assuming
+that there is any barrier between our circle and the other one?
+
+ANA. But surely there is a great gulf fixed.
+
+THE DEVIL. Dear lady: a parable must not be taken literally. The
+gulf is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic
+temperament. What more impassable gulf could you have? Think of
+what you have seen on earth. There is no physical gulf between
+the philosopher's class room and the bull ring; but the bull
+fighters do not come to the class room for all that. Have you
+ever been in the country where I have the largest following--
+England? There they have great racecourses, and also concert
+rooms where they play the classical compositions of his
+Excellency's friend Mozart. Those who go to the racecourses can
+stay away from them and go to the classical concerts instead if
+they like: there is no law against it; for Englishmen never will
+be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public
+opinion allows them to do. And the classical concert is admitted
+to be a higher, more cultivated, poetic, intellectual, ennobling
+place than the racecourse. But do the lovers of racing desert
+their sport and flock to the concert room? Not they. They would
+suffer there all the weariness the Commander has suffered in
+heaven. There is the great gulf of the parable between the two
+places. A mere physical gulf they could bridge; or at least I
+could bridge it for them (the earth is full of Devil's Bridges);
+but the gulf of dislike is impassable and eternal. And that is
+the only gulf that separates my friends here from those who are
+invidiously called the blest.
+
+ANA. I shall go to heaven at once.
+
+THE STATUE. My child; one word of warning first. Let me complete
+my friend Lucifer's similitude of the classical concert. At every
+one of those concerts in England you will find rows of weary
+people who are there, not because they really like classical
+music, but because they think they ought to like it. Well, there
+is the same thing in heaven. A number of people sit there in
+glory, not because they are happy, but because they think they
+owe it to their position to be in heaven. They are almost all
+English.
+
+THE DEVIL. Yes: the Southerners give it up and join me just as
+you have done. But the English really do not seem to know when
+they are thoroughly miserable. An Englishman thinks he is moral
+when he is only uncomfortable.
+
+THE STATUE. In short, my daughter, if you go to Heaven without
+being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself
+there.
+
+ANA. And who dares say that I am not naturally qualified for it?
+The most distinguished princes of the Church have never
+questioned it. I owe it to myself to leave this place at once.
+
+THE DEVIL. [offended] As you please, Senora. I should have
+expected better taste from you.
+
+ANA. Father: I shall expect you to come with me. You cannot stay
+here. What will people say?
+
+THE STATUE. People! Why, the best people are here--princes of the
+church and all. So few go to Heaven, and so many come here, that
+the blest, once called a heavenly host, are a continually
+dwindling minority. The saints, the fathers, the elect of long
+ago are the cranks, the faddists, the outsiders of to-day.
+
+THE DEVIL. It is true. From the beginning of my career I knew
+that I should win in the long run by sheer weight of public
+opinion, in spite of the long campaign of misrepresentation and
+calumny against me. At bottom the universe is a constitutional
+one; and with such a majority as mine I cannot be kept
+permanently out of office.
+
+DON JUAN. I think, Ana, you had better stay here.
+
+ANA. [jealously] You do not want me to go with you.
+
+DON JUAN. Surely you do not want to enter Heaven in the company
+of a reprobate like me.
+
+ANA. All souls are equally precious. You repent, do you not?
+
+DON JUAN. My dear Ana, you are silly. Do you suppose heaven is
+like earth, where people persuade themselves that what is done
+can be undone by repentance; that what is spoken can be unspoken
+by withdrawing it; that what is true can be annihilated by a
+general agreement to give it the lie? No: heaven is the home of
+the masters of reality: that is why I am going thither.
+
+ANA. Thank you: I am going to heaven for happiness. I have had
+quite enough of reality on earth.
+
+DON JUAN. Then you must stay here; for hell is the home of the
+unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge
+from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of
+reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of
+reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at
+being heros and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are
+dragged down from their fool's paradise by their bodies: hunger
+and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all,
+make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten
+and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be
+engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all
+driven at last to have but one prayer " Make me a healthy
+animal." But here you escape the tyranny of the flesh; for here
+you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an
+illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless.
+There are no social questions here, no political questions, no
+religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions.
+Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your
+sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on
+earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no
+ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human
+comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama.
+As our German friend put it in his poem, "the poetically
+nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us
+ever upward and on"--without getting us a step farther. And yet
+you want to leave this paradise!
+
+ANA. But if Hell be so beautiful as this, how glorious must
+heaven be!
+
+The Devil, the Statue, and Don Juan all begin to speak at once in
+violent protest; then stop, abashed.
+
+DON JUAN. I beg your pardon.
+
+THE DEVIL. Not at all. I interrupted you.
+
+THE STATUE. You were going to say something.
+
+DON JUAN. After you, gentlemen.
+
+THE DEVIL. [to Don Juan] You have been so eloquent on the
+advantages of my dominions that I leave you to do equal justice
+to the drawbacks of the alternative establishment.
+
+DON JUAN. In Heaven, as I picture it, dear lady, you live and
+work instead of playing and pretending. You face things as they
+are; you escape nothing but glamor; and your steadfastness and
+your peril are your glory. If the play still goes on here and on
+earth, and all the world is a stage, Heaven is at least behind
+the scenes. But Heaven cannot be described by metaphor. Thither I
+shall go presently, because there I hope to escape at last from
+lies and from the tedious, vulgar pursuit of happiness, to spend
+my eons in contemplation--
+
+THE STATUE. Ugh!
+
+DON JUAN. Senor Commander: I do not blame your disgust: a picture
+gallery is a dull place for a blind man. But even as you enjoy
+the contemplation of such romantic mirages as beauty and
+pleasure; so would I enjoy the contemplation of that which
+interests me above all things namely, Life: the force that ever
+strives to attain greater power of contemplating itself. What
+made this brain of mine, do you think? Not the need to move my
+limbs; for a rat with half my brains moves as well as I. Not
+merely the need to do, but the need to know what I do, lest in my
+blind efforts to live I should be slaying myself.
+
+THE STATUE. You would have slain yourself in your blind efforts
+to fence but for my foot slipping, my friend.
+
+DON JUAN. Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous
+boredom before morning.
+
+THE STATUE. Ha ha! Do you remember how I frightened you when I
+said something like that to you from my pedestal in Seville? It
+sounds rather flat without my trombones.
+
+DON JUAN. They tell me it generally sounds flat with them,
+Commander.
+
+ANA. Oh, do not interrupt with these frivolities, father. Is
+there nothing in Heaven but contemplation, Juan?
+
+DON JUAN. In the Heaven I seek, no other joy. But there is the
+work of helping Life in its struggle upward. Think of how it
+wastes and scatters itself, how it raises up obstacles to itself
+and destroys itself in its ignorance and blindness. It needs a
+brain, this irresistible force, lest in its ignorance it should
+resist itself. What a piece of work is man! says the poet. Yes:
+but what a blunderer! Here is the highest miracle of organization
+yet attained by life, the most intensely alive thing that exists,
+the most conscious of all the organisms; and yet, how wretched
+are his brains! Stupidity made sordid and cruel by the realities
+learnt from toil and poverty: Imagination resolved to starve
+sooner than face these realities, piling up illusions to hide
+them, and calling itself cleverness, genius! And each accusing
+the other of its own defect: Stupidity accusing Imagination of
+folly, and Imagination accusing Stupidity of ignorance: whereas,
+alas! Stupidity has all the knowledge, and Imagination all the
+intelligence.
+
+THE DEVIL. And a pretty kettle of fish they make of it between
+them. Did I not say, when I was arranging that affair of Faust's,
+that all Man's reason has done for him is to make him beastlier
+than any beast. One splendid body is worth the brains of a
+hundred dyspeptic, flatulent philosophers.
+
+DON JUAN. You forget that brainless magnificence of body has been
+tried. Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but
+brain have existed and perished. The megatherium, the
+icthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven-league steps and
+hidden the day with cloud vast wings. Where are they now? Fossils
+in museums, and so few and imperfect at that, that a knuckle bone
+or a tooth of one of them is prized beyond the lives of a
+thousand soldiers. These things lived and wanted to live; but for
+lack of brains they did not know how to carry out their purpose,
+and so destroyed themselves.
+
+THE DEVIL. And is Man any the less destroying himself for all
+this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the
+earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man's wonderful
+inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents
+nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and
+produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague,
+pestilence and famine. The peasant I tempt to-day eats and drinks
+what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years
+ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a
+thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady's bonnet in a score
+of weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of
+mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the
+hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the
+blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a
+bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with
+machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted
+money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling
+locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the
+Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's
+industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his
+weapons. This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a
+force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness.
+What is his religion? An excuse for hating ME. What is his law?
+An excuse for hanging YOU. What is his morality? Gentility! an
+excuse for consuming without producing. What is his art? An
+excuse for gloating over pictures of slaughter. What are his
+politics? Either the worship of a despot because a despot can
+kill, or parliamentary cockfighting. I spent an evening lately in
+a certain celebrated legislature, and heard the pot lecturing the
+kettle for its blackness, and ministers answering questions. When
+I left I chalked up on the door the old nursery saying--"Ask no
+questions and you will be told no lies." I bought a sixpenny
+family magazine, and found it full of pictures of young men
+shooting and stabbing one another. I saw a man die: he was a
+London bricklayer's laborer with seven children. He left
+seventeen pounds club money; and his wife spent it all on his
+funeral and went into the workhouse with the children next day.
+She would not have spent sevenpence on her children's schooling:
+the law had to force her to let them be taught gratuitously; but
+on death she spent all she had. Their imagination glows, their
+energies rise up at the idea of death, these people: they love
+it; and the more horrible it is the more they enjoy it. Hell is a
+place far above their comprehension: they derive their notion of
+it from two of the greatest fools that ever lived, an Italian and
+an Englishman. The Italian described it as a place of mud, frost,
+filth, fire, and venomous serpents: all torture. This ass, when
+he was not lying about me, was maundering about some woman whom
+he saw once in the street. The Englishman described me as being
+expelled from Heaven by cannons and gunpowder; and to this day
+every Briton believes that the whole of his silly story is in the
+Bible. What else he says I do not know; for it is all in a long
+poem which neither I nor anyone else ever succeeded in wading
+through. It is the same in everything. The highest form of
+literature is the tragedy, a play in which everybody is murdered
+at the end. In the old chronicles you read of earthquakes and
+pestilences, and are told that these showed the power and majesty
+of God and the littleness of Man. Nowadays the chronicles
+describe battles. In a battle two bodies of men shoot at one
+another with bullets and explosive shells until one body runs
+away, when the others chase the fugitives on horseback and cut
+them to pieces as they fly. And this, the chronicle concludes,
+shows the greatness and majesty of empires, and the littleness of
+the vanquished. Over such battles the people run about the
+streets yelling with delight, and egg their Governments on to
+spend hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter, whilst the
+strongest Ministers dare not spend an extra penny in the pound
+against the poverty and pestilence through which they themselves
+daily walk. I could give you a thousand instances; but they all
+come to the same thing: the power that governs the earth is not
+the power of Life but of Death; and the inner need that has
+nerved Life to the effort of organizing itself into the human
+being is not the need for higher life but for a more efficient
+engine of destruction. The plague, the famine, the earthquake,
+the tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and
+crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel enough:
+something more constantly, more ruthlessly, more ingeniously
+destructive was needed; and that something was Man, the inventor
+of the rack, the stake, the gallows, and the electrocutor; of the
+sword and gun; above all, of justice, duty, patriotism and all
+the other isms by which even those who are clever enough to be
+humanely disposed are persuaded to become the most destructive of
+all the destroyers.
+
+DON JUAN. Pshaw! all this is old. Your weak side, my diabolic
+friend, is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his
+own valuation. Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion
+of him. He loves to think of himself as bold and bad. He is
+neither one nor the other: he is only a coward. Call him tyrant,
+murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about
+with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings
+in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an
+action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go
+mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth.
+Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for
+his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that
+one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his
+cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his
+respectability. There are limits to what a mule or an ass will
+stand; but Man will suffer himself to be degraded until his
+vileness becomes so loathsome to his oppressors that they
+themselves are forced to reform it.
+
+THE DEVIL. Precisely. And these are the creatures in whom you
+discover what you call a Life Force!
+
+DON JUAN. Yes; for now comes the most surprising part of the
+whole business.
+
+THE STATUE. What's that?
+
+DON JUAN. Why, that you can make any of these cowards brave by
+simply putting an idea into his head.
+
+THE STATUE. Stuff! As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's
+as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But
+that about putting an idea into a man's head is stuff and
+nonsense. In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little
+hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than
+to win.
+
+DON JUAN. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men
+never really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting
+to further a universal purpose--fighting for an idea, as they
+call it. Why was the Crusader braver than the pirate? Because he
+fought, not for himself, but for the Cross. What force was it
+that met him with a valor as reckless as his own? The force of
+men who fought, not for themselves, but for Islam. They took
+Spain from us, though we were fighting for our very hearths and
+homes; but when we, too, fought for that mighty idea, a Catholic
+Church, we swept them back to Africa.
+
+THE DEVIL. [ironically] What! you a Catholic, Senor Don Juan! A
+devotee! My congratulations.
+
+THE STATUE. [seriously] Come come! as a soldier, I can listen to
+nothing against the Church.
+
+DON JUAN. Have no fear, Commander: this idea of a Catholic Church
+will survive Islam, will survive the Cross, will survive even
+that vulgar pageant of incompetent schoolboyish gladiators which
+you call the Army.
+
+THE STATUE. Juan: you will force me to call you to account for
+this.
+
+DON JUAN. Useless: I cannot fence. Every idea for which Man will
+die will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last
+that he is no better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better
+than Mahomet, he will arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on
+a barricade across the filthy slum he starves in, for universal
+liberty and equality.
+
+THE STATUE. Bosh!
+
+DON JUAN. What you call bosh is the only thing men dare die for.
+Later on, Liberty will not be Catholic enough: men will die for
+human perfection, to which they will sacrifice all their liberty
+gladly.
+
+THE DEVIL. Ay: they will never be at a loss for an excuse for
+killing one another.
+
+DON JUAN. What of that? It is not death that matters, but the
+fear of death. It is not killing and dying that degrade us, but
+base living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation.
+Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master. Men shall
+yet rise up, father against son and brother against brother, and
+kill one another for the great Catholic idea of abolishing
+slavery.
+
+THE DEVIL. Yes, when the Liberty and Equality of which you prate
+shall have made free white Christians cheaper in the labor market
+than by auction at the block.
+
+DON JUAN. Never fear! the white laborer shall have his turn too.
+But I am not now defending the illusory forms the great ideas
+take. I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature
+Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone,
+will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a
+citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be
+enslaved whilst he is spiritually weak enough to listen to
+reason. I tell you, gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of
+what he now calls God's work to do, and what he will later on
+call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the
+consequences to himself personally.
+
+ANA. Yes: he shirks all his responsibilities, and leaves his wife
+to grapple with them.
+
+THE STATUE. Well said, daughter. Do not let him talk you out of
+your common sense.
+
+THE DEVIL. Alas! Senor Commander, now that we have got on to the
+subject of Woman, he will talk more than ever. However, I confess
+it is for me the one supremely interesting subject.
+
+DON JUAN. To a woman, Senora, man's duties and responsibilities
+begin and end with the task of getting bread for her children. To
+her, Man is only a means to the end of getting children and
+rearing them.
+
+ANA. Is that your idea of a woman's mind? I call it cynical and
+disgusting materialism.
+
+DON JUAN. Pardon me, Ana: I said nothing about a woman's whole
+mind. I spoke of her view of Man as a separate sex. It is no more
+cynical than her view of herself as above all things a Mother.
+Sexually, Woman is Nature's contrivance for perpetuating its
+highest achievement. Sexually, Man is Woman's contrivance for
+fulfilling Nature's behest in the most economical way. She knows
+by instinct that far back in the evolutional process she invented
+him, differentiated him, created him in order to produce
+something better than the single-sexed process can produce.
+Whilst he fulfils the purpose for which she made him, he is
+welcome to his dreams, his follies, his ideals, his heroisms,
+provided that the keystone of them all is the worship of woman,
+of motherhood, of the family, of the hearth. But how rash and
+dangerous it was to invent a separate creature whose sole
+function was her own impregnation! For mark what has happened.
+First, Man has multiplied on her hands until there are as many
+men as women; so that she has been unable to employ for her
+purposes more than a fraction of the immense energy she has left
+at his disposal by saving him the exhausting labor of gestation.
+This superfluous energy has gone to his brain and to his muscle.
+He has become too strong to be controlled by her bodily, and too
+imaginative and mentally vigorous to be content with mere self-
+reproduction. He has created civilization without consulting her,
+taking her domestic labor for granted as the foundation of it.
+
+ANA. THAT is true, at all events.
+
+THE DEVIL. Yes; and this civilization! what is it, after all?
+
+DON JUAN. After all, an excellent peg to hang your cynical
+commonplaces on; but BEFORE all, it is an attempt on Man's part
+to make himself something more than the mere instrument of
+Woman's purpose. So far, the result of Life's continual effort
+not only to maintain itself, but to achieve higher and higher
+organization and completer self-consciousness, is only, at best,
+a doubtful campaign between its forces and those of Death and
+Degeneration. The battles in this campaign are mere blunders,
+mostly won, like actual military battles, in spite of the
+commanders.
+
+THE STATUE. That is a dig at me. No matter: go on, go on.
+
+DON JUAN. It is a dig at a much higher power than you, Commander.
+Still, you must have noticed in your profession that even a
+stupid general can win battles when the enemy's general is a
+little stupider.
+
+THE STATUE. [very seriously] Most true, Juan, most true. Some
+donkeys have amazing luck.
+
+DON JUAN. Well, the Life Force is stupid; but it is not so stupid
+as the forces of Death and Degeneration. Besides, these are in
+its pay all the time. And so Life wins, after a fashion. What
+mere copiousness of fecundity can supply and mere greed preserve,
+we possess. The survival of whatever form of civilization can
+produce the best rifle and the best fed riflemen is assured.
+
+THE DEVIL. Exactly! the survival, not of the most effective means
+of Life but of the most effective means of Death. You always come
+back to my point, in spite of your wrigglings and evasions and
+sophistries, not to mention the intolerable length of your
+speeches.
+
+DON JUAN. Oh come! who began making long speeches? However, if I
+overtax your intellect, you can leave us and seek the society of
+love and beauty and the rest of your favorite boredoms.
+
+THE DEVIL. [much offended] This is not fair, Don Juan, and not
+civil. I am also on the intellectual plane. Nobody can appreciate
+it more than I do. I am arguing fairly with you, and, I think,
+utterly refuting you. Let us go on for another hour if you like.
+
+DON JUAN. Good: let us.
+
+THE STATUE. Not that I see any prospect of your coming to any
+point in particular, Juan. Still, since in this place, instead of
+merely killing time we have to kill eternity, go ahead by all
+means.
+
+DON JUAN. [somewhat impatiently] My point, you marbleheaded old
+masterpiece, is only a step ahead of you. Are we agreed that Life
+is a force which has made innumerable experiments in organizing
+itself; that the mammoth and the man, the mouse and the
+megatherium, the flies and the fleas and the Fathers of the
+Church, are all more or less successful attempts to build up that
+raw force into higher and higher individuals, the ideal
+individual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and withal
+completely, unilludedly self-conscious: in short, a god?
+
+THE DEVIL. I agree, for the sake of argument.
+
+THE STATUE. I agree, for the sake of avoiding argument.
+
+ANA. I most emphatically disagree as regards the Fathers of the
+Church; and I must beg you not to drag them into the argument.
+
+DON JUAN. I did so purely for the sake of alliteration, Ana; and
+I shall make no further allusion to them. And now, since we are,
+with that exception, agreed so far, will you not agree with me
+further that Life has not measured the success of its attempts at
+godhead by the beauty or bodily perfection of the result, since
+in both these respects the birds, as our friend Aristophanes long
+ago pointed out, are so extraordinarily superior, with their
+power of flight and their lovely plumage, and, may I add, the
+touching poetry of their loves and nestings, that it is
+inconceivable that Life, having once produced them, should, if
+love and beauty were her object, start off on another line and
+labor at the clumsy elephant and the hideous ape, whose
+grandchildren we are?
+
+ANA. Aristophanes was a heathen; and you, Juan, I am afraid, are
+very little better.
+
+THE DEVIL. You conclude, then, that Life was driving at
+clumsiness and ugliness?
+
+DON JUAN. No, perverse devil that you are, a thousand times no.
+Life was driving at brains--at its darling object: an organ by
+which it can attain not only self-consciousness but
+self-understanding.
+
+THE STATUE. This is metaphysics, Juan. Why the devil should--[to
+the Devil] I BEG your pardon.
+
+THE DEVIL. Pray don't mention it. I have always regarded the use
+of my name to secure additional emphasis as a high compliment to
+me. It is quite at your service, Commander.
+
+THE STATUE. Thank you: that's very good of you. Even in heaven, I
+never quite got out of my old military habits of speech. What I
+was going to ask Juan was why Life should bother itself about
+getting a brain. Why should it want to understand itself? Why not
+be content to enjoy itself?
+
+DON JUAN. Without a brain, Commander, you would enjoy yourself
+without knowing it, and so lose all the fun.
+
+THE STATUE. True, most true. But I am quite content with brain
+enough to know that I'm enjoying myself. I don't want to
+understand why. In fact, I'd rather not. My experience is that
+one's pleasures don't bear thinking about.
+
+DON JUAN. That is why intellect is so unpopular. But to Life, the
+force behind the Man, intellect is a necessity, because without
+it he blunders into death. Just as Life, after ages of struggle,
+evolved that wonderful bodily organ the eye, so that the living
+organism could see where it was going and what was coming to help
+or threaten it, and thus avoid a thousand dangers that formerly
+slew it, so it is evolving to-day a mind's eye that shall see,
+not the physical world, but the purpose of Life, and thereby
+enable the individual to work for that purpose instead of
+thwarting and baffling it by setting up shortsighted personal
+aims as at present. Even as it is, only one sort of man has ever
+been happy, has ever been universally respected among all the
+conflicts of interests and illusions.
+
+THE STATUE. You mean the military man.
+
+DON JUAN. Commander: I do not mean the military man. When the
+military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs
+off its womankind. No: I sing, not arms and the hero, but the,
+philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the
+inner will of the world, in invention to discover the means of
+fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the
+so-discovered means. Of all other sorts of men I declare myself
+tired. They're tedious failures. When I was on earth, professors
+of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me
+on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me
+consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack
+cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a
+hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way.
+The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save
+my soul; but I was not a spiritual hypochondriac any more than a
+bodily one, and would not trouble myself about that either; so
+they called me Atheist and went their way. After them came the
+politician, who said there was only one purpose in Nature, and
+that was to get him into parliament. I told him I did not care
+whether he got into parliament or not; so he called me Mugwump
+and went his way. Then came the romantic man, the Artist, with
+his love songs and his paintings and his poems; and with him I
+had great delight for many years, and some profit; for I
+cultivated my senses for his sake; and his songs taught me to
+hear better, his paintings to see better, and his poems to feel
+more deeply. But he led me at last into the worship of Woman.
+
+ANA. Juan!
+
+DON JUAN. Yes: I came to believe that in her voice was all the
+music of the song, in her face all the beauty of the painting,
+and in her soul all the emotion of the poem.
+
+ANA. And you were disappointed, I suppose. Well, was it her fault
+that you attributed all these perfections to her?
+
+DON JUAN. Yes, partly. For with a wonderful instinctive cunning,
+she kept silent and allowed me to glorify her; to mistake my own
+visions, thoughts, and feelings for hers. Now my friend the
+romantic man was often too poor or too timid to approach those
+women who were beautiful or refined enough to seem to realize his
+ideal; and so he went to his grave believing in his dream. But I
+was more favored by nature and circumstance. I was of noble
+birth and rich; and when my person did not please, my
+conversation flattered, though I generally found myself
+fortunate in both.
+
+THE STATUE. Coxcomb!
+
+DON JUAN. Yes; but even my coxcombry pleased. Well, I found that
+when I had touched a woman's imagination, she would allow me to
+persuade myself that she loved me; but when my suit was granted
+she never said "I am happy: my love is satisfied": she always
+said, first, "At last, the barriers are down," and second, "When
+will you come again?"
+
+ANA. That is exactly what men say.
+
+DON JUAN. I protest I never said it. But all women say it. Well,
+these two speeches always alarmed me; for the first meant that
+the lady's impulse had been solely to throw down my
+fortifications and gain my citadel; and the second openly
+announced that henceforth she regarded me as her property, and
+counted my time as already wholly at her disposal.
+
+THE DEVIL. That is where your want of heart came in.
+
+THE STATUE. [shaking his head] You shouldn't repeat what a woman
+says, Juan.
+
+ANA. [severely] It should be sacred to you.
+
+THE STATUE. Still, they certainly do always say it. I never
+minded the barriers; but there was always a slight shock about
+the other, unless one was very hard hit indeed.
+
+DON JUAN. Then the lady, who had been happy and idle enough
+before, became anxious, preoccupied with me, always intriguing,
+conspiring, pursuing, watching, waiting, bent wholly on making
+sure of her prey--I being the prey, you understand. Now this was
+not what I had bargained for. It may have been very proper and
+very natural; but it was not music, painting, poetry and joy
+incarnated in a beautiful woman. I ran away from it. I ran away
+from it very often: in fact I became famous for running away from
+it.
+
+ANA. Infamous, you mean,
+
+DON JUAN. I did not run away from you. Do you blame me for
+running away from the others?
+
+ANA. Nonsense, man. You are talking to a woman of 77 now. If you
+had had the chance, you would have run away from me too--if I had
+let you. You would not have found it so easy with me as with some
+of the others. If men will not be faithful to their home and
+their duties, they must be made to be. I daresay you all want to
+marry lovely incarnations of music and painting and poetry. Well,
+you can't have them, because they don't exist. If flesh and blood
+is not good enough for you you must go without: that's all. Women
+have to put up with flesh-and-blood husbands--and little enough
+of that too, sometimes; and you will have to put up with
+flesh-and-blood wives. The Devil looks dubious. The Statue makes
+a wry face. I see you don't like that, any of you; but it's true,
+for all that; so if you don't like it you can lump it.
+
+DON JUAN. My dear lady, you have put my whole case against
+romance into a few sentences. That is just why I turned my back
+on the romantic man with the artist nature, as he called his
+infatuation. I thanked him for teaching me to use my eyes and
+ears; but I told him that his beauty worshipping and happiness
+hunting and woman idealizing was not worth a dump as a philosophy
+of life; so he called me Philistine and went his way.
+
+ANA. It seems that Woman taught you something, too, with all her
+defects.
+
+DON JUAN. She did more: she interpreted all the other teaching
+for me. Ah, my friends, when the barriers were down for the first
+time, what an astounding illumination! I had been prepared for
+infatuation, for intoxication, for all the illusions of love's
+young dream; and lo! never was my perception clearer, nor my
+criticism more ruthless. The most jealous rival of my mistress
+never saw every blemish in her more keenly than I. I was not
+duped: I took her without chloroform.
+
+ANA. But you did take her.
+
+DON JUAN. That was the revelation. Up to that moment I had never
+lost the sense of being my own master; never consciously taken a
+single step until my reason had examined and approved it. I had
+come to believe that I was a purely rational creature: a thinker!
+I said, with the foolish philosopher, "I think; therefore I am."
+It was Woman who taught me to say "I am; therefore I think." And
+also "I would think more; therefore I must be more."
+
+THE STATUE. This is extremely abstract and metaphysical, Juan. If
+you would stick to the concrete, and put your discoveries in the
+form of entertaining anecdotes about your adventures with women,
+your conversation would be easier to follow.
+
+DON JUAN. Bah! what need I add? Do you not understand that when I
+stood face to face with Woman, every fibre in my clear critical
+brain warned me to spare her and save myself. My morals said No.
+My conscience said No. My chivalry and pity for her said No. My
+prudent regard for myself said No. My ear, practised on a
+thousand songs and symphonies; my eye, exercised on a thousand
+paintings; tore her voice, her features, her color to shreds. I
+caught all those tell-tale resemblances to her father and mother
+by which I knew what she would be like in thirty years time. I
+noted the gleam of gold from a dead tooth in the laughing mouth:
+I made curious observations of the strange odors of the chemistry
+of the nerves. The visions of my romantic reveries, in which I
+had trod the plains of heaven with a deathless, ageless creature
+of coral and ivory, deserted me in that supreme hour. I
+remembered them and desperately strove to recover their illusion;
+but they now seemed the emptiest of inventions: my judgment was
+not to be corrupted: my brain still said No on every issue. And
+whilst I was in the act of framing my excuse to the lady, Life
+seized me and threw me into her arms as a sailor throws a scrap
+of fish into the mouth of a seabird.
+
+THE STATUE. You might as well have gone without thinking such a
+lot about it, Juan. You are like all the clever men: you have
+more brains than is good for you.
+
+THE DEVIL. And were you not the happier for the experience, Senor
+Don Juan?
+
+DON JUAN. The happier, no: the wiser, yes. That moment introduced
+me for the first time to myself, and, through myself, to the
+world. I saw then how useless it is to attempt to impose
+conditions on the irresistible force of Life; to preach prudence,
+careful selection, virtue, honor, chastity--
+
+ANA. Don Juan: a word against chastity is an insult to me.
+
+DON JUAN. I say nothing against your chastity, Senora, since it
+took the form of a husband and twelve children. What more could
+you have done had you been the most abandoned of women?
+
+ANA. I could have had twelve husbands and no children that's what
+I could have done, Juan. And let me tell you that that would have
+made all the difference to the earth which I replenished.
+
+THE STATUE. Bravo Ana! Juan: you are floored, quelled,
+annihilated.
+
+DON JUAN. No; for though that difference is the true essential
+difference--Dona Ana has, I admit, gone straight to the real
+point--yet it is not a difference of love or chastity, or even
+constancy; for twelve children by twelve different husbands would
+have replenished the earth perhaps more effectively. Suppose my
+friend Ottavio had died when you were thirty, you would never
+have remained a widow: you were too beautiful. Suppose the
+successor of Ottavio had died when you were forty, you would
+still have been irresistible; and a woman who marries twice
+marries three times if she becomes free to do so. Twelve lawful
+children borne by one highly respectable lady to three different
+fathers is not impossible nor condemned by public opinion. That
+such a lady may be more law abiding than the poor girl whom we
+used to spurn into the gutter for bearing one unlawful infant is
+no doubt true; but dare you say she is less self-indulgent?
+
+ANA. She is less virtuous: that is enough for me.
+
+DON JUAN. In that case, what is virtue but the Trade Unionism of
+the married? Let us face the facts, dear Ana. The Life Force
+respects marriage only because marriage is a contrivance of its
+own to secure the greatest number of children and the closest
+care of them. For honor, chastity and all the rest of your moral
+figments it cares not a rap. Marriage is the most licentious of
+human institutions--
+
+ANA. Juan!
+
+THE STATUE. [protesting] Really!--
+
+DON JUAN. [determinedly] I say the most licentious of human
+institutions: that is the secret of its popularity. And a woman
+seeking a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of
+prey. The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to
+destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single
+error. Come, Ana! do not look shocked: you know better than any
+of us that marriage is a mantrap baited with simulated
+accomplishments and delusive idealizations. When your sainted
+mother, by dint of scoldings and punishments, forced you to learn
+how to play half a dozen pieces on the spinet which she hated as
+much as you did--had she any other purpose than to delude your
+suitors into the belief that your husband would have in his home
+an angel who would fill it with melody, or at least play him to
+sleep after dinner? You married my friend Ottavio: well, did you
+ever open the spinet from the hour when the Church united him to
+you?
+
+ANA. You are a fool, Juan. A young married woman has something
+else to do than sit at the spinet without any support for her
+back; so she gets out of the habit of playing.
+
+DON JUAN. Not if she loves music. No: believe me, she only throws
+away the bait when the bird is in the net.
+
+ANA. [bitterly] And men, I suppose, never throw off the mask when
+their bird is in the net. The husband never becomes negligent,
+selfish, brutal--oh never!
+
+DON JUAN. What do these recriminations prove, Ana? Only that the
+hero is as gross an imposture as the heroine.
+
+ANA. It is all nonsense: most marriages are perfectly
+comfortable.
+
+DON JUAN. "Perfectly" is a strong expression, Ana. What you mean
+is that sensible people make the best of one another. Send me to
+the galleys and chain me to the felon whose number happens to be
+next before mine; and I must accept the inevitable and make the
+best of the companionship. Many such companionships, they tell
+me, are touchingly affectionate; and most are at least tolerably
+friendly. But that does not make a chain a desirable ornament nor
+the galleys an abode of bliss. Those who talk most about the
+blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very
+people who declare that if the chain were broken and the
+prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly
+asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner
+is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
+
+ANA. At all events, let me take an old woman's privilege again,
+and tell you flatly that marriage peoples the world and
+debauchery does not.
+
+DON JUAN. How if a time comes when this shall cease to be true? Do
+you not know that where there is a will there is a way--that
+whatever Man really wishes to do he will finally discover a means
+of doing? Well, you have done your best, you virtuous ladies, and
+others of your way of thinking, to bend Man's mind wholly towards
+honorable love as the highest good, and to understand by
+honorable love romance and beauty and happiness in the possession
+of beautiful, refined, delicate, affectionate women. You have
+taught women to value their own youth, health, shapeliness, and
+refinement above all things. Well, what place have squalling
+babies and household cares in this exquisite paradise of the
+senses and emotions? Is it not the inevitable end of it all that
+the human will shall say to the human brain: Invent me a means by
+which I can have love, beauty, romance, emotion, passion without
+their wretched penalties, their expenses, their worries, their
+trials, their illnesses and agonies and risks of death, their
+retinue of servants and nurses and doctors and schoolmasters.
+
+THE DEVIL. All this, Senor Don Juan, is realized here in my
+realm.
+
+DON JUAN. Yes, at the cost of death. Man will not take it at that
+price: he demands the romantic delights of your hell whilst he is
+still on earth. Well, the means will be found: the brain will not
+fail when the will is in earnest. The day is coming when great
+nations will find their numbers dwindling from census to census;
+when the six roomed villa will rise in price above the family
+mansion; when the viciously reckless poor and the stupidly pious
+rich will delay the extinction of the race only by degrading it;
+whilst the boldly prudent, the thriftily selfish and ambitious,
+the imaginative and poetic, the lovers of money and solid
+comfort, the worshippers of success, art, and of love, will all
+oppose to the Force of Life the device of sterility.
+
+THE STATUE. That is all very eloquent, my young friend; but if
+you had lived to Ana's age, or even to mine, you would have
+learned that the people who get rid of the fear of poverty and
+children and all the other family troubles, and devote themselves
+to having a good time of it, only leave their minds free for the
+fear of old age and ugliness and impotence and death. The
+childless laborer is more tormented by his wife's idleness and
+her constant demands for amusement and distraction than he could
+be by twenty children; and his wife is more wretched than he. I
+have had my share of vanity; for as a young man I was admired by
+women; and as a statue I am praised by art critics. But I confess
+that had I found nothing to do in the world but wallow in these
+delights I should have cut my throat. When I married Ana's
+mother--or perhaps, to be strictly correct, I should rather say
+when I at last gave in and allowed Ana's mother to marry me--I
+knew that I was planting thorns in my pillow, and that marriage
+for me, a swaggering young officer thitherto unvanquished, meant
+defeat and capture.
+
+ANA. [scandalized] Father!
+
+THE STATUE. I am sorry to shock you, my love; but since Juan has
+stripped every rag of decency from the discussion I may as well
+tell the frozen truth.
+
+ANA. Hmf! I suppose I was one of the thorns.
+
+THE STATUE. By no means: you were often a rose. You see, your
+mother had most of the trouble you gave.
+
+DON JUAN. Then may I ask, Commander, why you have left Heaven to
+come here and wallow, as you express it, in sentimental
+beatitudes which you confess would once have driven you to cut
+your throat?
+
+THE STATUE. [struck by this] Egad, that's true.
+
+THE DEVIL. [alarmed] What! You are going back from your word. [To
+Don Juan] And all your philosophizing has been nothing but a mask
+for proselytizing! [To the Statue] Have you forgotten already the
+hideous dulness from which I am offering you a refuge here? [To
+Don Juan] And does your demonstration of the approaching
+sterilization and extinction of mankind lead to anything better
+than making the most of those pleasures of art and love which you
+yourself admit refined you, elevated you, developed you?
+
+DON JUAN. I never demonstrated the extinction of mankind. Life
+cannot will its own extinction either in its blind amorphous
+state or in any of the forms into which it has organized itself.
+I had not finished when His Excellency interrupted me.
+
+THE STATUE. I begin to doubt whether you ever will finish, my
+friend. You are extremely fond of hearing yourself talk.
+
+DON JUAN. True; but since you have endured so much. you may as
+well endure to the end. Long before this sterilization which I
+described becomes more than a clearly foreseen possibility, the
+reaction will begin. The great central purpose of breeding the
+race, ay, breeding it to heights now deemed superhuman: that
+purpose which is now hidden in a mephitic cloud of love and
+romance and prudery and fastidiousness, will break through into
+clear sunlight as a purpose no longer to be confused with the
+gratification of personal fancies, the impossible realization of
+boys' and girls' dreams of bliss, or the need of older people for
+companionship or money. The plain-spoken marriage services of the
+vernacular Churches will no longer be abbreviated and half
+suppressed as indelicate. The sober decency, earnestness and
+authority of their declaration of the real purpose of marriage
+will be honored and accepted, whilst their romantic vowings and
+pledgings and until-death-do-us-partings and the like will be
+expunged as unbearable frivolities. Do my sex the justice to
+admit, Senora, that we have always recognized that the sex
+relation is not a personal or friendly relation at all.
+
+ANA. Not a personal or friendly relation! What relation is more
+personal? more sacred? more holy?
+
+DON JUAN. Sacred and holy, if you like, Ana, but not personally
+friendly. Your relation to God is sacred and holy: dare you call
+it personally friendly? In the sex relation the universal
+creative energy, of which the parties are both the helpless
+agents, over-rides and sweeps away all personal considerations
+and dispenses with all personal relations. The pair may be utter
+strangers to one another, speaking different languages, differing
+in race and color, in age and disposition, with no bond between
+them but a possibility of that fecundity for the sake of which
+the Life Force throws them into one another's arms at the
+exchange of a glance. Do we not recognize this by allowing
+marriages to be made by parents without consulting the woman?
+Have you not often expressed your disgust at the immorality of
+the English nation, in which women and men of noble birth become
+acquainted and court each other like peasants? And how much does
+even the peasant know of his bride or she of him before he
+engages himself? Why, you would not make a man your lawyer or
+your family doctor on so slight an acquaintance as you would fall
+in love with and marry him!
+
+ANA. Yes, Juan: we know the libertine's philosophy. Always ignore
+the consequences to the woman.
+
+DON JUAN. The consequences, yes: they justify her fierce grip of
+the man. But surely you do not call that attachment a sentimental
+one. As well call the policeman's attachment to his prisoner a
+love relation.
+
+ANA. You see you have to confess that marriage is necessary,
+though, according to you, love is the slightest of all the
+relations.
+
+DON JUAN. How do you know that it is not the greatest of all the
+relations? far too great to be a personal matter. Could your
+father have served his country if he had refused to kill any
+enemy of Spain unless he personally hated him? Can a woman serve
+her country if she refuses to marry any man she does not
+personally love? You know it is not so: the woman of noble birth
+marries as the man of noble birth fights, on political and family
+grounds, not on personal ones.
+
+THE STATUE. [impressed] A very clever point that, Juan: I must
+think it over. You are really full of ideas. How did you come to
+think of this one?
+
+DON JUAN. I learnt it by experience. When I was on earth, and
+made those proposals to ladies which, though universally
+condemned, have made me so interesting a hero of legend, I was
+not infrequently met in some such way as this. The lady would say
+that she would countenance my advances, provided they were
+honorable. On inquiring what that proviso meant, I found that it
+meant that I proposed to get possession of her property if she
+had any, or to undertake her support for life if she had not;
+that I desired her continual companionship, counsel and
+conversation to the end of my days, and would bind myself
+under penalties to be always enraptured by them; and, above all,
+that I would turn my back on all other women for ever for her
+sake. I did not object to these conditions because they were
+exorbitant and inhuman: it was their extraordinary irrelevance
+that prostrated me. I invariably replied with perfect frankness
+that I had never dreamt of any of these things; that unless the
+lady's character and intellect were equal or superior to my own,
+her conversation must degrade and her counsel mislead me; tha t
+her constant companionship might, for all I knew, become
+intolerably tedious to me; that I could not answer for my
+feelings for a week in advance, much less to the end of my life;
+that to cut me off from all natural and unconstrained relations
+with the rest of my fellow creatures would narrow and warp me if
+I submitted to it, and, if not, would bring me under the curse of
+clandestinity; that, finally, my proposals to her were wholly
+unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome of a
+perfectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.
+
+ANA. You mean that it was an immoral impulse.
+
+DON JUAN. Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush
+for it; but I cannot help it. Nature is a pandar, Time a wrecker,
+and Death a murderer. I have always preferred to stand up to
+those facts and build institutions on their recognition. You
+prefer to propitiate the three devils by proclaiming their
+chastity, their thrift, and their loving kindness; and to base
+your institutions on these flatteries. Is it any wonder that the
+institutions do not work smoothly?
+
+THE STATUE. What used the ladies to say, Juan?
+
+DON JUAN. Oh, come! Confidence for confidence. First tell me what
+you used to say to the ladies.
+
+THE STATUE. I! Oh, I swore that I would be faithful to the death;
+that I should die if they refused me; that no woman could ever be
+to me what she was--
+
+ANA. She? Who?
+
+THE STATUE. Whoever it happened to be at the time, my dear. I had
+certain things I always said. One of them was that even when I
+was eighty, one white hair of the woman I loved would make me
+tremble more than the thickest gold tress from the most beautiful
+young head. Another was that I could not bear the thought of
+anyone else being the mother of my children.
+
+DON JUAN. [revolted] You old rascal!
+
+THE STATUE. [Stoutly] Not a bit; for I really believed it with
+all my soul at the moment. I had a heart: not like you. And it
+was this sincerity that made me successful.
+
+DON JUAN. Sincerity! To be fool enough to believe a ramping,
+stamping, thumping lie: that is what you call sincerity! To be so
+greedy for a woman that you deceive yourself in your eagerness to
+deceive her: sincerity, you call it!
+
+THE STATUE. Oh, damn your sophistries! I was a man in love, not a
+lawyer. And the women loved me for it, bless them!
+
+DON JUAN. They made you think so. What will you say when I tell
+you that though I played the lawyer so callously, they made me
+think so too? I also had my moments of infatuation in which I
+gushed nonsense and believed it. Sometimes the desire to give
+pleasure by saying beautiful things so rose in me on the flood of
+emotion that I said them recklessly. At other times I argued
+against myself with a devilish coldness that drew tears. But I
+found it just as hard to escape in the one case as in the others.
+When the lady's instinct was set on me, there was nothing for it
+but lifelong servitude or flight.
+
+ANA. You dare boast, before me and my father, that every woman
+found you irresistible.
+
+DON JUAN. Am I boasting? It seems to me that I cut the most
+pitiable of figures. Besides, I said "when the lady's instinct
+was set on me." It was not always so; and then, heavens! what
+transports of virtuous indignation! what overwhelming defiance to
+the dastardly seducer! what scenes of Imogen and Iachimo!
+
+ANA. I made no scenes. I simply called my father.
+
+DON JUAN. And he came, sword in hand, to vindicate outraged honor
+and morality by murdering me.
+
+THE STATUE. Murdering! What do you mean? Did I kill you or did
+you kill me?
+
+DON JUAN. Which of us was the better fencer?
+
+THE STATUE. I was.
+
+DON JUAN. Of course you were. And yet you, the hero of those
+scandalous adventures you have just been relating to us, you had
+the effrontery to pose as the avenger of outraged morality and
+condemn me to death! You would have slain me but for an accident.
+
+THE STATUE. I was expected to, Juan. That is how things were
+arranged on earth. I was not a social reformer; and I always did
+what it was customary for a gentleman to do.
+
+DON JUAN. That may account for your attacking me, but not for the
+revolting hypocrisy of your subsequent proceedings as a statue.
+
+THE STATUE. That all came of my going to Heaven.
+
+THE DEVIL. I still fail to see, Senor Don Juan, that these
+episodes in your earthly career and in that of the Senor
+Commander in any way discredit my view of life. Here, I repeat,
+you have all that you sought without anything that you shrank
+from.
+
+DON JUAN. On the contrary, here I have everything that
+disappointed me without anything that I have not already tried
+and found wanting. I tell you that as long as I can conceive
+something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am
+striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
+That is the law of my life. That is the working within me of
+Life's incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider,
+deeper, intenser self-consciousness, and clearer
+self-understanding. It was the supremacy of this purpose that
+reduced love for me to the mere pleasure of a moment, art for me
+to the mere schooling of my faculties, religion for me to a mere
+excuse for laziness, since it had set up a God who looked at the
+world and saw that it was good, against the instinct in me that
+looked through my eyes at the world and saw that it could be
+improved. I tell you that in the pursuit of my own pleasure, my
+own health, my own fortune, I have never known happiness. It was
+not love for Woman that delivered me into her hands: it was
+fatigue, exhaustion. When I was a child, and bruised my head
+against a stone, I ran to the nearest woman and cried away my
+pain against her apron. When I grew up, and bruised my soul
+against the brutalities and stupidities with which I had to
+strive, I did again just what I had done as a child. I have
+enjoyed, too, my rests, my recuperations, my breathing times, my
+very prostrations after strife; but rather would I be dragged
+through all the circles of the foolish Italian's Inferno than
+through the pleasures of Europe. That is what has made this place
+of eternal pleasures so deadly to me. It is the absence of this
+instinct in you that makes you that strange monster called a
+Devil. It is the success with which you have diverted the
+attention of men from their real purpose, which in one degree or
+another is the same as mine, to yours, that has earned you the
+name of The Tempter. It is the fact that they are doing your
+will, or rather drifting with your want of will, instead of doing
+their own, that makes them the uncomfortable, false, restless,
+artificial, petulant, wretched creatures they are.
+
+THE DEVIL. [mortified] Senor Don Juan: you are uncivil to my
+friends.
+
+DON JUAN. Pooh! why should I be civil to them or to you? In this
+Palace of Lies a truth or two will not hurt you. Your friends are
+all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are
+only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and
+starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably
+dressed. They are not educated they are only college passmen.
+They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not
+moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they
+are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only
+"frail." They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They
+are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they
+are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public
+spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not
+determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not
+self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not
+kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not
+considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not
+progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious;
+not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not
+disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all--liars every one
+of them, to the very backbone of their souls.
+
+THE STATUE. Your flow of words is simply amazing, Juan. How I
+wish I could have talked like that to my soldiers.
+
+THE DEVIL. It is mere talk, though. It has all been said before;
+but what change has it ever made? What notice has the world ever
+taken of it?
+
+DON JUAN. Yes, it is mere talk. But why is it mere talk? Because,
+my friend, beauty, purity, respectability, religion, morality,
+art, patriotism, bravery and the rest are nothing but words which
+I or anyone else can turn inside out like a glove. Were they
+realities, you would have to plead guilty to my indictment; but
+fortunately for your self-respect, my diabolical friend, they are
+not realities. As you say, they are mere words, useful for duping
+barbarians into adopting civilization, or the civilized poor into
+submitting to be robbed and enslaved. That is the family secret
+of the governing caste; and if we who are of that caste aimed at
+more Life for the world instead of at more power and luxury for
+our miserable selves, that secret would make us great. Now, since
+I, being a nobleman, am in the secret too, think how tedious to
+me must be your unending cant about all these moralistic
+figments, and how squalidly disastrous your sacrifice of your
+lives to them! If you even believed in your moral game enough to
+play it fairly, it would be interesting to watch; but you don't:
+you cheat at every trick; and if your opponent outcheats you, you
+upset the table and try to murder him.
+
+THE DEVIL. On earth there may be some truth in this, because the
+people are uneducated and cannot appreciate my religion of love
+and beauty; but here--
+
+DON JUAN. Oh yes: I know. Here there is nothing but love and
+beauty. Ugh! it is like sitting for all eternity at the first act
+of a fashionable play, before the complications begin. Never in
+my worst moments of superstitious terror on earth did I dream
+that Hell was so horrible. I live, like a hairdresser, in the
+continual contemplation of beauty, toying with silken tresses. I
+breathe an atmosphere of sweetness, like a confectioner's
+shopboy. Commander: are there any beautiful women in Heaven?
+
+THE STATUE. None. Absolutely none. All dowdies. Not two pennorth
+of jewellery among a dozen of them. They might be men of fifty.
+
+DON JUAN. I am impatient to get there. Is the word beauty ever
+mentioned; and are there any artistic people?
+
+THE STATUE. I give you my word they won't admire a fine statue
+even when it walks past them.
+
+DON JUAN. I go.
+
+THE DEVIL. Don Juan: shall I be frank with you?
+
+DON JUAN. Were you not so before?
+
+THE DEVIL. As far as I went, yes. But I will now go further, and
+confess to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no
+less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record
+of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An
+epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks
+the world is progressing because it is always moving. But when
+you are as old as I am; when you have a thousand times wearied of
+heaven, like myself and the Commander, and a thousand times
+wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no longer
+imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation,
+every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see
+reform, progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent
+by Man on the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher
+things, you will see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion.
+You will discover the profound truth of the saying of my friend
+Koheleth, that there is nothing new under the sun. Vanitas
+vanitatum--
+
+DON JUAN. [out of all patience] By Heaven, this is worse than
+your cant about love and beauty. Clever dolt that you are, is a
+man no better than a worm, or a dog than a wolf, because he gets
+tired of everything? Shall he give up eating because he destroys
+his appetite in the act of gratifying it? Is a field idle when it
+is fallow? Can the Commander expend his hellish energy here
+without accumulating heavenly energy for his next term of
+blessedness? Granted that the great Life Force has hit on the
+device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its
+bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel
+to us the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation
+repeated; nay more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time
+the sun throws off the earth and catches it again a thousand
+times as a circus rider throws up a ball, and that the total
+of all our epochs is but the moment between the toss and the
+catch, has the colossal mechanism no purpose?
+
+THE DEVIL. None, my friend. You think, because you have a
+purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to
+have fingers and toes because you have them.
+
+DON JUAN. But I should not have them if they served no purpose.
+And I, my friend, am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is
+a part of me. If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the
+sword and the mandoline, my brain is the organ by which Nature
+strives to understand itself. My dog's brain serves only my dog's
+purposes; but my brain labors at a knowledge which does nothing
+for me personally but make my body bitter to me and my decay and
+death a calamity. Were I not possessed with a purpose beyond my
+own I had better be a ploughman than a philosopher; for the
+ploughman lives as long as the philosopher, eats more, sleeps
+better, and rejoices in the wife of his bosom with less
+misgiving. This is because the philosopher is in the grip of the
+Life Force. This Life Force says to him "I have done a thousand
+wonderful things unconsciously by merely willing to live and
+following the line of least resistance: now I want to know myself
+and my destination, and choose my path; so I have made a special
+brain--a philosopher's brain--to grasp this knowledge for me as
+the husbandman's hand grasps the plough for me. "And this" says
+the Life Force to the philosopher "must thou strive to do for me
+until thou diest, when I will make another brain and another
+philosopher to carry on the work."
+
+THE DEVIL. What is the use of knowing?
+
+DON JUAN. Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest
+advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least
+resistance. Does a ship sail to its destination no better than a
+log drifts nowhither? The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And
+there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be
+in heaven is to steer.
+
+THE DEVIL. On the rocks, most likely.
+
+DON JUAN. Pooh! which ship goes oftenest on the rocks or to the
+bottom--the drifting ship or the ship with a pilot on board?
+
+THE DEVIL. Well, well, go your way, Senor Don Juan. I prefer to
+be my own master and not the tool of any blundering universal
+force. I know that beauty is good to look at; that music is good
+to hear; that love is good to feel; and that they are all good to
+think about and talk about. I know that to be well exercised in
+these sensations, emotions, and studies is to be a refined and
+cultivated being. Whatever they may say of me in churches on
+earth, I know that it is universally admitted in good society
+that the prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is enough
+for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it
+is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any
+character. But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all
+reformers are, it will thrust you first into religion, where you
+will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me; then
+it will drive you from religion into science, where you will
+snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate them
+with disease to save them from catching it accidentally; then you
+will take to politics, where you will become the catspaw of
+corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious humbugs; and
+the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken nerve and
+shattered hopes, vain regrets for that worst and silliest of
+wastes and sacrifices, the waste and sacrifice of the power of
+enjoyment: in a word, the punishment of the fool who pursues the
+better before he has secured the good.
+
+DON JUAN. But at least I shall not be bored. The service of the
+Life Force has that advantage, at all events. So fare you well,
+Senor Satan.
+
+THE DEVIL. [amiably] Fare you well, Don Juan. I shall often think
+of our interesting chats about things in general. I wish you
+every happiness: Heaven, as I said before, suits some people. But
+if you should change your mind, do not forget that the gates are
+always open here to the repentant prodigal. If you feel at any
+time that warmth of heart, sincere unforced affection, innocent
+enjoyment, and warm, breathing, palpitating reality--
+
+DON JUAN. Why not say flesh and blood at once, though we have
+left those two greasy commonplaces behind us?
+
+THE DEVIL. [angrily] You throw my friendly farewell back in my
+teeth, then, Don Juan?
+
+DON JUAN. By no means. But though there is much to be learnt from
+a cynical devil, I really cannot stand a sentimental one. Senor
+Commander: you know the way to the frontier of hell and heaven.
+Be good enough to direct me.
+
+THE STATUE. Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two
+ways of looking at things. Any road will take you across it if
+you really want to get there.
+
+DON JUAN. Good. [saluting Dona Ana] Senora: your servant.
+
+ANA. But I am going with you.
+
+DON JUAN. I can find my own way to heaven, Ana; but I cannot find
+yours [he vanishes].
+
+ANA. How annoying!
+
+THE STATUE. [calling after him] Bon voyage, Juan! [He wafts a
+final blast of his great rolling chords after him as a parting
+salute. A faint echo of the first ghostly melody comes back in
+acknowledgment]. Ah! there he goes. [Puffing a long breath out
+through his lips] Whew! How he does talk! They'll never stand it
+in heaven.
+
+THE DEVIL. [gloomily] His going is a political defeat. I cannot
+keep these Life Worshippers: they all go. This is the greatest
+loss I have had since that Dutch painter went--a fellow who would
+paint a hag of 70 with as much enjoyment as a Venus of 20.
+
+THE STATUE. I remember: he came to heaven. Rembrandt.
+
+THE DEVIL. Ay, Rembrandt. There a something unnatural about these
+fellows. Do not listen to their gospel, Senor Commander: it is
+dangerous. Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to
+an indiscriminate contempt for the Human. To a man, horses and
+dogs and cats are mere species, outside the moral world. Well, to
+the Superman, men and women are a mere species too, also outside
+the moral world. This Don Juan was kind to women and courteous to
+men as your daughter here was kind to her pet cats and dogs; but
+such kindness is a denial of the exclusively human character of
+the soul.
+
+THE STATUE. And who the deuce is the Superman?
+
+THE DEVIL. Oh, the latest fashion among the Life Force fanatics.
+Did you not meet in Heaven, among the new arrivals, that German
+Polish madman--what was his name? Nietzsche?
+
+THE STATUE. Never heard of him.
+
+THE DEVIL. Well, he came here first, before he recovered his
+wits. I had some hopes of him; but he was a confirmed Life Force
+worshipper. It was he who raked up the Superman, who is as old as
+Prometheus; and the 20th century will run after this newest of
+the old crazes when it gets tired of the world, the flesh, and
+your humble servant.
+
+THE STATUE. Superman is a good cry; and a good cry is half the
+battle. I should like to see this Nietzsche.
+
+THE DEVIL. Unfortunately he met Wagner here, and had a quarrel
+with him.
+
+THE STATUE. Quite right, too. Mozart for me!
+
+THE DEVIL. Oh, it was not about music. Wagner once drifted into
+Life Force worship, and invented a Superman called Siegfried. But
+he came to his senses afterwards. So when they met here,
+Nietzsche denounced him as a renegade; and Wagner wrote a pamphlet
+to prove that Nietzsche was a Jew; and it ended in Nietzsche's
+going to heaven in a huff. And a good riddance too. And now, my
+friend, let us hasten to my palace and celebrate your arrival with
+a grand musical service.
+
+THE STATUE. With pleasure: you're most kind.
+
+THE DEVIL. This way, Commander. We go down the old trap [he
+places himself on the grave trap].
+
+THE STATUE. Good. [Reflectively] All the same, the Superman is a
+fine conception. There is something statuesque about it. [He
+places himself on the grave trap beside The Devil. It begins to
+descend slowly. Red glow from the abyss]. Ah, this reminds me of
+old times.
+
+THE DEVIL. And me also.
+
+ANA. Stop! [The trap stops].
+
+THE DEVIL. You, Senora, cannot come this way. You will have an
+apotheosis. But you will be at the palace before us.
+
+ANA. That is not what I stopped you for. Tell me where can I find
+the Superman?
+
+THE DEVIL. He is not yet created, Senora.
+
+THE STATUE. And never will be, probably. Let us proceed: the red
+fire will make me sneeze. [They descend].
+
+ANA. Not yet created! Then my work is not yet done. [Crossing
+herself devoutly] I believe in the Life to Come. [Crying to the
+universe] A father--a father for the Superman!
+
+She vanishes into the void; and again there is nothing: all
+existence seems suspended infinitely. Then, vaguely, there is a
+live human voice crying somewhere. One sees, with a shock, a
+mountain peak showing faintly against a lighter background. The
+sky has returned from afar; and we suddenly remember where we
+were. The cry becomes distinct and urgent: it says Automobile,
+Automobile. The complete reality comes back with a rush: in a
+moment it is full morning in the Sierra; and the brigands are
+scrambling to their feet and making for the road as the goatherd
+runs down from the hill, warning them of the approach of another
+motor. Tanner and Mendoza rise amazedly and stare at one another
+with scattered wits. Straker sits up to yawn for a moment before
+he gets on his feet, making it a point of honor not to show any
+undue interest in the excitement of the bandits. Mendoza gives a
+quick look to see that his followers are attending to the alarm;
+then exchanges a private word with Tanner.
+
+MENDOZA. Did you dream?
+
+TANNER. Damnably. Did you?
+
+MENDOZA. Yes. I forget what. You were in it.
+
+TANNER. So were you. Amazing
+
+MENDOZA. I warned you. [a shot is heard from the road]. Dolts!
+they will play with that gun. [The brigands come running back
+scared]. Who fired that shot? [to Duval] Was it you?
+
+DUVAL. [breathless] I have not shoot. Dey shoot first.
+
+ANARCHIST. I told you to begin by abolishing the State. Now we
+are all lost.
+
+THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [stampeding across the amphitheatre]
+Run, everybody.
+
+MENDOZA. [collaring him; throwing him on his back; and drawing a
+knife] I stab the man who stirs. [He blocks the way. The stampede
+it checked]. What has happened?
+
+THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT, A motor--
+
+THE ANARCHIST. Three men--
+
+DUVAL. Deux femmes--
+
+MENDOZA. Three men and two women! Why have you not brought them
+here? Are you afraid of them?
+
+THE ROWDY ONE. [getting up] Thyve a hescort. Ow, de-ooh lut's ook
+it, Mendowza.
+
+THE SULKY ONE. Two armored cars full o soldiers at the end o the
+valley.
+
+ANARCHIST. The shot was fired in the air. It was a signal.
+
+Straker whistles his favorite air, which falls on the ears of the
+brigands like a funeral march.
+
+TANNER. It is not an escort, but an expedition to capture you. We
+were advised to wait for it; but I was in a hurry.
+
+THE ROWDY ONE. [in an agony of apprehension] And Ow my good Lord,
+ere we are, wytin for em! Lut's tike to the mahntns.
+
+MENDOZA. Idiot, what do you know about the mountains? Are you a
+Spaniard? You would be given up by the first shepherd you met.
+Besides, we are already within range of their rifles.
+
+THE ROWDY ONE. Bat--
+
+MENDOZA. Silence. Leave this to me. [To Tanner] Comrade: you will
+not betray us.
+
+STRAKER. Oo are you callin comrade?
+
+MENDOZA. Last night the advantage was with me. The robber of the
+poor was at the mercy of the robber of the rich. You offered your
+hand: I took it.
+
+TANNER. I bring no charge against you, comrade. We have spent a
+pleasant evening with you: that is all.
+
+STRAKER. I gev my and to nobody, see?
+
+MENDOZA. [turning on him impressively] Young man, if I am tried,
+I shall plead guilty, and explain what drove me from England, home
+and duty. Do you wish to have the respectable name of Straker
+dragged through the mud of a Spanish criminal court? The police
+will search me. They will find Louisa's portrait. It will be
+published in the illustrated papers. You blench. It will be your
+doing, remember.
+
+STRAKER. [with baffled rage] I don't care about the court. It's
+avin our name mixed up with yours that I object to, you
+blackmailin swine, you.
+
+MENDOZA. Language unworthy of Louisa's brother! But no matter:
+you are muzzled: that is enough for us. [He turns to face his own
+men, who back uneasily across the amphitheatre towards the cave
+to take refuge behind him, as a fresh party, muffled for
+motoring, comes from the road in riotous spirits. Ann, who makes
+straight for Tanner, comes first; then Violet, helped over the
+rough ground by Hector holding her right hand and Ramsden her
+left. Mendoza goes to his presidential block and seats himself
+calmly with his rank and file grouped behind him, and his Staff,
+consisting of Duval and the Anarchist on his right and the two
+Social-Democrats on his left, supporting him in flank].
+
+ANN. It's Jack!
+
+TANNER. Caught!
+
+HECTOR. Why, certainly it is. I said it was you, Tanner, We've
+just been stopped by a puncture: the road is full of nails.
+
+VIOLET. What are you doing here with all these men?
+
+ANN. Why did you leave us without a word of warning?
+
+HECTOR. I want that bunch of roses, Miss Whitefield. [To Tanner]
+When we found you were gone, Miss Whitefield bet me a bunch of
+roses my car would not overtake yours before you reached Monte
+Carlo.
+
+TANNER. But this is not the road to Monte Carlo.
+
+HECTOR. No matter. Miss Whitefield tracked you at every stopping
+place: she is a regular Sherlock Holmes.
+
+TANNER. The Life Force! I am lost.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [Bounding gaily down from the road into the
+amphitheatre, and coming between Tanner and Straker] I am so glad
+you are safe, old chap. We were afraid you had been captured by
+brigands.
+
+RAMSDEN. [who has been staring at Mendoza] I seem to remember the
+face of your friend here. [Mendoza rises politely and advances
+with a smile between Ann and Ramsden].
+
+HECTOR. Why, so do I.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I know you perfectly well, Sir; but I can't think where
+I have met you.
+
+MENDOZA. [to Violet] Do YOU remember me, madam?
+
+VIOLET. Oh, quite well; but I am so stupid about names.
+
+MENDOZA. It was at the Savoy Hotel. [To Hector] You, sir, used to
+come with this lady [Violet] to lunch. [To Octavius] You, sir,
+often brought this lady [Ann] and her mother to dinner on your
+way to the Lyceum Theatre. [To Ramsden] You, sir, used to come to
+supper, with [dropping his voice to a confidential but perfectly
+audible whisper] several different ladies.
+
+RAMSDEN. [angrily] Well, what is that to you, pray?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Why, Violet, I thought you hardly knew one another
+before this trip, you and Malone!
+
+VIOLET. [vexed] I suppose this person was the manager.
+
+MENDOZA. The waiter, madam. I have a grateful recollection of you
+all. I gathered from the bountiful way in which you treated me
+that you all enjoyed your visits very much.
+
+VIOLET. What impertinence! [She turns her back on him, and goes
+up the hill with Hector].
+
+RAMSDEN. That will do, my friend. You do not expect these ladies
+to treat you as an acquaintance, I suppose, because you have
+waited on them at table.
+
+MENDOZA. Pardon me: it was you who claimed my acquaintance. The
+ladies followed your example. However, this display of the
+unfortunate manners of your class closes the incident. For the
+future, you will please address me with the respect due to a
+stranger and fellow traveller. [He turns haughtily away and
+resumes his presidential seat].
+
+TANNER. There! I have found one man on my journey capable of
+reasonable conversation; and you all instinctively insult him.
+Even the New Man is as bad as any of you. Enry: you have behaved
+just like a miserable gentleman.
+
+STRAKER. Gentleman! Not me.
+
+RAMSDEN. Really, Tanner, this tone--
+
+ANN. Don't mind him, Granny: you ought to know him by this time
+[she takes his arm and coaxes him away to the hill to join Violet
+and Hector. Octavius follows her, doglike].
+
+VIOLET. [calling from the hill] Here are the soldiers. They are
+getting out of their motors.
+
+DUVAL. [panicstricken] Oh, nom de Dieu!
+
+THE ANARCHIST. Fools: the State is about to crush you because you
+spared it at the prompting of the political hangers-on of the
+bourgeoisie.
+
+THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [argumentative to the last] On the
+contrary, only by capturing the State machine--
+
+THE ANARCHIST. It is going to capture you.
+
+THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. [his anguish culminating] Ow, chock
+it. Wot are we ere for? WOT are we wytin for?
+
+MENDOZA. [between his teeth] Goon. Talk politics, you idiots:
+nothing sounds more respectable. Keep it up, I tell you.
+
+The soldiers line the road, commanding the amphitheatre with
+their rifles. The brigands, struggling with an over-whelming
+impulse to hide behind one another, look as unconcerned as they
+can. Mendoza rises superbly, with undaunted front. The officer
+in command steps down from the road in to the amphitheatre;
+looks hard at the brigands; and then inquiringly at Tanner.
+
+THE OFFICER. Who are these men, Senor Ingles?
+
+TANNER. My escort.
+
+Mendoza, with a Mephistophelean smile, bows profoundly. An
+irrepressible grin runs from face to face among the brigands. They
+touch their hats, except the Anarchist, who defies the State with
+folded arms.
+
+
+
+ACT IV
+
+The garden of a villa in Granada. Whoever wishes to know what it
+is like must go to Granada and see. One may prosaically specify a
+group of hills dotted with villas, the Alhambra on the top of one
+of the hills, and a considerable town in the valley, approached
+by dusty white roads in which the children, no matter what they
+are doing or thinking about, automatically whine for halfpence
+and reach out little clutching brown palms for them; but there is
+nothing in this description except the A1hambra, the begging, and
+the color of the roads, that does not fit Surrey as well as
+Spain. The difference is that the Surrey hills are comparatively
+small and ugly, and should properly be called the Surrey
+Protuberances; but these Spanish hills are of mountain stock: the
+amenity which conceals their size does not compromise their
+dignity.
+
+This particular garden is on a hill opposite the Alhambra; and
+the villa is as expensive and pretentious as a villa must be if
+it is to be let furnished by the week to opulent American and
+English visitors. If we stand on the lawn at the foot of the
+garden and look uphill, our horizon is the stone balustrade of a
+flagged platform on the edge of infinite space at the top of the
+hill. Between us and this platform is a flower garden with a
+circular basin and fountain in the centre, surrounded by
+geometrical flower beds, gravel paths, and clipped yew trees in
+the genteelest order. The garden is higher than our lawn; so we
+reach it by a few steps in the middle of its embankment. The
+platform is higher again than the garden, from which we mount a
+couple more steps to look over the balustrade at a fine view of
+the town up the valley and of the hills that stretch away beyond
+it to where, in the remotest distance, they become mountains. On
+our left is the villa, accessible by steps from the left hand
+corner of the garden. Returning from the platform through the
+garden and down again to the lawn (a movement which leaves the
+villa behind us on our right) we find evidence of literary
+interests on the part of the tenants in the fact that there is no
+tennis net nor set of croquet hoops, but, on our left, a little
+iron garden table with books on it, mostly yellow-backed, and a
+chair beside it. A chair on the right has also a couple of open
+books upon it. There are no newspapers, a circumstance which,
+with the absence of games, might lead an intelligent spectator to
+the most far reaching conclusions as to the sort of people who
+live in the villa. Such speculations are checked, however, on
+this delightfully fine afternoon, by the appearance at a little
+gate in a paling an our left, of Henry Straker in his
+professional costume. He opens the gate for an elderly gentleman,
+and follows him on to the lawn.
+
+This elderly gentleman defies the Spanish sun in a black frock
+coat, tall silk bat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark
+grey and lilac blend into a highly respectable color, and a black
+necktie tied into a bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a
+man whose social position needs constant and scrupulous
+affirmation without regard to climate: one who would dress thus
+for the middle of the Sahara or the top of Mont Blanc. And since
+he has not the stamp of the class which accepts as its
+life-mission the advertizing and maintenance of first rate
+tailoring and millinery, he looks vulgar in his finery, though in
+a working dress of any kind he would look dignified enough. He is
+a bullet cheeked man with a red complexion, stubbly hair,
+smallish eyes, a hard mouth that folds down at the corners, and a
+dogged chin. The looseness of skin that comes with age has
+attacked his throat and the laps of his cheeks; but he is still
+hard as an apple above the mouth; so that the upper half of his
+face looks younger than the lower. He has the self-confidence of
+one who has made money, and something of the truculence of one
+who has made it in a brutalizing struggle, his civility having
+under it a perceptible menace that he has other methods in
+reserve if necessary. Withal, a man to be rather pitied when he
+is not to be feared; for there is something pathetic about him at
+times, as if the huge commercial machine which has worked him
+into his frock coat had allowed him very little of his own way
+and left his affections hungry and baffled. At the first word
+that falls from him it is clear that he is an Irishman whose
+native intonation has clung to him through many changes of place
+and rank. One can only guess that the original material of his
+speech was perhaps the surly Kerry brogue; but the degradation of
+speech that occurs in London, Glasgow, Dublin and big cities
+generally has been at work on it so long that nobody but an
+arrant cockney would dream of calling it a brogue now; for its
+music is almost gone, though its surliness is still perceptible.
+Straker, as a very obvious cockney, inspires him with implacable
+contempt, as a stupid Englishman who cannot even speak his own
+language properly. Straker, on the other hand, regards the old
+gentleman's accent as a joke thoughtfully provided by Providence
+expressly for the amusement of the British race, and treats him
+normally with the indulgence due to an inferior and unlucky
+species, but occasionally with indignant alarm when the old
+gentleman shows signs of intending his Irish nonsense to be taken
+seriously.
+
+STRAKER. I'll go tell the young lady. She said you'd prefer to
+stay here [he turns to go up through the garden to the villa].
+
+MALONE. [who has been looking round him with lively curiosity]
+The young lady? That's Miss Violet, eh?
+
+STRAKER. [stopping on the steps with sudden suspicion] Well, you
+know, don't you?
+
+MALONE. Do  I?
+
+STRAKER. [his temper rising] Well, do you or don't you?
+
+MALONE. What business is that of yours?
+
+Straker, now highly indignant, comes back from the steps and
+confronts the visitor.
+
+STRAKER. I'll tell you what business it is of mine. Miss
+Robinson--
+
+MALONE. [interrupting] Oh, her name is Robinson, is it? Thank
+you.
+
+STRAKER. Why, you don't know even her name?
+
+MALONE. Yes I do, now that you've told me.
+
+STRAKER. [after a moment of stupefaction at the old man's
+readiness in repartee] Look here: what do you mean by gittin into
+my car and lettin me bring you here if you're not the person I
+took that note to?
+
+MALONE. Who else did you take it to, pray?
+
+STRAKER. I took it to Mr Ector Malone, at Miss Robinson's
+request, see? Miss Robinson is not my principal: I took it to
+oblige her. I know Mr Malone; and he ain't you, not by a long
+chalk. At the hotel they told me that your name is Ector Malone.
+
+MALONE. Hector Malone.
+
+STRAKER. [with calm superiority] Hector in your own country:
+that's what comes o livin in provincial places like Ireland and
+America. Over here you're Ector: if you avn't noticed it before
+you soon will.
+
+The growing strain of the conversation is here relieved by
+Violet, who has sallied from the villa and through the garden to
+the steps, which she now descends, coming very opportunely
+between Malone and Straker.
+
+VIOLET. [to Straker] Did you take my message?
+
+STRAKER. Yes, miss. I took it to the hotel and sent it up,
+expecting to see young Mr Malone. Then out walks this gent, and
+says it's all right and he'll come with me. So as the hotel
+people said he was Mr Ector Malone, I fetched him. And now he
+goes back on what he said. But if he isn't the gentleman you
+meant, say the word: it's easy enough to fetch him back again.
+
+MALONE. I should esteem it a great favor if I might have a short
+conversation with you, madam. I am Hector's father, as this
+bright Britisher would have guessed in the course of another hour
+or so.
+
+STRAKER. [coolly defiant] No, not in another year or so. When
+we've ad you as long to polish up as we've ad im, perhaps you'll
+begin to look a little bit up to is mark. At present you fall a
+long way short. You've got too many aitches, for one thing. [To
+Violet, amiably] All right, Miss: you want to talk to him: I
+shan't intrude. [He nods affably to Malone and goes out through
+the little gate in the paling].
+
+VIOLET. [very civilly] I am so sorry, Mr Malone, if that man has
+been rude to you. But what can we do? He is our chauffeur.
+
+MALONE. Your what?
+
+VIOLET. The driver of our automobile. He can drive a motor car at
+seventy miles an hour, and mend it when it breaks down. We are
+dependent on our motor cars; and our motor cars are dependent on
+him; so of course we are dependent on him.
+
+MALONE. I've noticed, madam, that every thousand dollars an
+Englishman gets seems to add one to the number of people he's
+dependent on. However, you needn't apologize for your man: I made
+him talk on purpose. By doing so I learnt that you're staying
+here in Grannida with a party of English, including my son
+Hector.
+
+VIOLET. [conversationally] Yes. We intended to go to Nice; but we
+had to follow a rather eccentric member of our party who started
+first and came here. Won't you sit down? [She clears the nearest
+chair of the two books on it].
+
+MALONE. [impressed by this attention] Thank you. [He sits down,
+examining her curiously as she goes to the iron table to put down
+the books. When she turns to him again, he says] Miss Robinson, I
+believe?
+
+VIOLET. [sitting down] Yes.
+
+MALONE. [Taking a letter from his pocket] Your note to Hector runs
+as follows [Violet is unable to repress a start. He pauses
+quietly to take out and put on his spectacles, which have gold
+rims]: "Dearest: they have all gone to the Alhambra for the
+afternoon. I have shammed headache and have the garden all to
+myself. Jump into Jack's motor: Straker will rattle you here in a
+jiffy. Quick, quick, quick. Your loving Violet." [He looks at
+her; but by this time she has recovered herself, and meets his
+spectacles with perfect composure. He continues slowly] Now I
+don't know on what terms young people associate in English
+society; but in  America that note would be considered to imply a
+very  considerable degree of affectionate intimacy between the
+parties.
+
+VIOLET. Yes: I know your son very well, Mr Malone. Have you any
+objection?
+
+MALONE. [somewhat taken aback] No, no objection exactly. Provided
+it is understood that my son is altogether dependent on me, and
+that I have to be consulted in any important step he may propose
+to take.
+
+VIOLET. I am sure you would not be unreasonable with him, Mr
+Malone.
+
+MALONE. I hope not, Miss Robinson; but at your age you might
+think many things unreasonable that don't seem so to me.
+
+VIOLET. [with a little shrug] Oh well, I suppose there's no use
+our playing at cross purposes, Mr Malone. Hector wants to marry
+me.
+
+MALONE. I inferred from your note that he might. Well, Miss
+Robinson, he is his own master; but if he marries you he shall
+not have a rap from me. [He takes off his spectacles and pockets
+them with the note].
+
+VIOLET. [with some severity] That is not very complimentary to
+me, Mr Malone.
+
+MALONE. I say nothing against you, Miss Robinson: I daresay you
+are an amiable and excellent young lady. But I have other views
+for Hector.
+
+VIOLET. Hector may not have other views for himself, Mr Malone.
+
+MALONE. Possibly not. Then he does without me: that's all. I
+daresay you are prepared for that. When a young lady writes to a
+young man to come to her quick, quick, quick, money seems nothing
+and love seems everything.
+
+VIOLET. [sharply] I beg your pardon, Mr Malone: I do not think
+anything so foolish. Hector must have money.
+
+MALONE. [staggered] Oh, very well, very well. No doubt he can
+work for it.
+
+VIOLET. What is the use of having money if you have to work for
+it? [She rises impatiently]. It's all nonsense, Mr Malone: you
+must enable your son to keep up his position. It is his right.
+
+MALONE. [grimly] I should not advise you to marry him on the
+strength of that right, Miss Robinson.
+
+Violet, who has almost lost her temper, controls herself with an
+effort; unclenches her fingers; and resumes her seat with studied
+tranquillity and reasonableness.
+
+VIOLET. What objection have you to me, pray? My social position
+is as good as Hector's, to say the least. He admits it.
+
+MALONE. [shrewdly] You tell him so from time to time, eh?
+Hector's social position in England, Miss Robinson, is just what
+I choose to buy for him. I have made him a fair offer. Let him
+pick out the most historic house, castle or abbey that England
+contains. The day that he tells me he wants it for a wife worthy
+of its traditions, I buy it for him, and give him the means of
+keeping it up.
+
+VIOLET. What do you mean by a wife worthy of its traditions?
+Cannot any well bred woman keep such a house for him?
+
+MALONE. No: she must be born to it.
+
+VIOLET. Hector was not born to it, was he?
+
+MALONE. His granmother was a barefooted Irish girl that nursed
+me by a turf fire. Let him marry another such, and I will not
+stint her marriage portion. Let him raise himself socially with
+my money or raise somebody else so long as there is a social
+profit somewhere, I'll regard my expenditure as justified. But
+there must be a profit for someone. A marriage with you would
+leave things just where they are.
+
+VIOLET. Many of my relations would object very much to my
+marrying the grandson of a common woman, Mr Malone. That may be
+prejudice; but so is your desire to have him marry a title
+prejudice.
+
+MALONE. [rising, and approaching her with a scrutiny in which
+there is a good deal of reluctant respect] You seem a pretty
+straightforward downright sort of a young woman.
+
+VIOLET. I do not see why I should be made miserably poor because
+I cannot make profits for you. Why do you want to make Hector
+unhappy?
+
+MALONE. He will get over it all right enough. Men thrive better
+on disappointments in love than on disappointments in money. I
+daresay you think that sordid; but I know what I'm talking about.
+My father died of starvation in Ireland in the black 47, Maybe
+you've heard of it.
+
+VIOLET. The Famine?
+
+MALONE. [with smouldering passion] No, the starvation. When a
+country is full of food, and exporting it, there can be no
+famine. My father was starved dead; and I was starved out to
+America in my mother's arms. English rule drove me and mine out
+of Ireland. Well, you can keep Ireland. I and my like are coming
+back to buy England; and we'll buy the best of it. I want no
+middle class properties and no middle class women for Hector.
+That's straightforward isn't it, like yourself?
+
+VIOLET. [icily pitying his sentimentality] Really, Mr Malone, I
+am astonished to hear a man of your age and good sense talking in
+that romantic way. Do you suppose English noblemen will sell
+their places to you for the asking?
+
+MALONE. I have the refusal of two of the oldest family mansions
+in England. One historic owner can't afford to keep all the rooms
+dusted: the other can't afford the death duties. What do you say
+now?
+
+VIOLET. Of course it is very scandalous; but surely you know that
+the Government will sooner or later put a stop to all these
+Socialistic attacks on property.
+
+MALONE. [grinning] D'y' think they'll be able to get that done
+before I buy the house--or rather the abbey? They're both abbeys.
+
+VIOLET. [putting that aside rather impatiently] Oh, well, let us
+talk sense, Mr Malone. You must feel that we haven't been talking
+sense so far.
+
+MALONE. I can't say I do. I mean all I say.
+
+VIOLET. Then you don't know Hector as I do. He is romantic and
+faddy--he gets it from you, I fancy--and he wants a certain sort
+of wife to take care of him. Not a faddy sort of person, you
+know.
+
+MALONE. Somebody like you, perhaps?
+
+VIOLET. [quietly] Well, yes. But you cannot very well ask me to
+undertake this with absolutely no means of keeping up his
+position.
+
+MALONE. [alarmed] Stop a bit, stop a bit. Where are we getting
+to? I'm not aware that I'm asking you to undertake anything.
+
+VIOLET. Of course, Mr Malone, you can make it very difficult for
+me to speak to you if you choose to misunderstand me.
+
+MALONE. [half bewildered] I don't wish to take any unfair
+advantage; but we seem to have got off the straight track
+somehow.
+
+Straker, with the air of a man who has been making haste, opens
+the little gate, and admits Hector, who, snorting with
+indignation, comes upon the lawn, and is making for his father
+when Violet, greatly dismayed, springs up and intercepts him.
+Straker doer not wait; at least he does not remain visibly within
+earshot.
+
+VIOLET. Oh, how unlucky! Now please, Hector, say nothing. Go away
+until I have finished speaking to your father.
+
+HECTOR. [inexorably] No, Violet: I mean to have this thing out,
+right away. [He puts her aside; passes her by; and faces his
+father, whose cheeks darken as his Irish blood begins to simmer].
+Dad: you've not played this hand straight.
+
+MALONE. Hwat d'y'mean?
+
+HECTOR. You've opened a letter addressed to me. You've
+impersonated me and stolen a march on this lady. That's
+dishonorable.
+
+MALONE. [threateningly] Now you take care what you're saying,
+Hector. Take care, I tell you.
+
+HECTOR. I have taken care. I am taking care. I'm taking care of
+my honor and my position in English society.
+
+MALONE. [hotly] Your position has been got by my money: do you
+know that?
+
+HECTOR. Well, you've just spoiled it all by opening that letter.
+A letter from an English lady, not addressed to you--a
+confidential letter! a delicate letter! a private letter opened
+by my father! That's a sort of thing a man can't struggle against
+in England. The sooner we go back together the better. [He
+appeals mutely to the heavens to witness the shame and anguish of
+two outcasts].
+
+VIOLET. [snubbing him with an instinctive dislike for scene
+making] Don't be unreasonable, Hector. It was quite natural of Mr
+Malone to open my letter: his name was on the envelope.
+
+MALONE. There! You've no common sense, Hector. I thank you, Miss
+Robinson.
+
+HECTOR. I thank you, too. It's very kind of you. My father knows
+no better.
+
+MALONE. [furiously clenching his fists] Hector--
+
+HECTOR. [with undaunted moral force] Oh, it's no use hectoring
+me. A private letter's a private letter, dad: you can't get over
+that.
+
+MALONE [raising his voice] I won't be talked back to by you,
+d'y' hear?
+
+VIOLET. Ssh! please, please. Here they all come.
+
+Father and son, checked, glare mutely at one another as Tanner
+comes in through the little gate with Ramsden, followed by
+Octavius and Ann.
+
+VIOLET. Back already!
+
+TANNER. The Alhambra is not open this afternoon.
+
+VIOLET. What a sell!
+
+Tanner passes on, and presently finds himself between Hector and
+a strange elder, both apparently on the verge of personal combat.
+He looks from one to the other for an explanation. They sulkily
+avoid his eye, and nurse their wrath in silence.
+
+RAMSDEN. Is it wise for you to be out in the sunshine with such a
+headache, Violet?
+
+TANNER. Have you recovered too, Malone?
+
+VIOLET. Oh, I forgot. We have not all met before. Mr Malone:
+won't you introduce your father?
+
+HECTOR. [with Roman firmness] No, I will not. He is no father of
+mine.
+
+MALONE. [very angry] You disown your dad before your English
+friends, do you?
+
+VIOLET. Oh please don't make a scene.
+
+Ann and Octavius, lingering near the gate, exchange an astonished
+glance, and discreetly withdraw up the steps to the garden, where
+they can enjoy the disturbance without intruding. On their way to
+the steps Ann sends a little grimace of mute sympathy to Violet,
+who is standing with her back to the little table, looking on in
+helpless annoyance as her husband soars to higher and higher
+moral eminences without the least regard to the old man's
+millions.
+
+HECTOR. I'm very sorry, Miss Robinson; but I'm contending for a
+principle. I am a son, and, I hope, a dutiful one; but before
+everything I'm a Man!!! And when dad treats my private letters as
+his own, and takes it on himself to say that I shan't marry you
+if I am happy and fortunate enough to gain your consent, then I
+just snap my fingers and go my own way.
+
+TANNER. Marry Violet!
+
+RAMSDEN. Are you in your senses?
+
+TANNER. Do you forget what we told you?
+
+HECTOR. [recklessly] I don't care what you told me.
+
+RAMSDEN. [scandalized] Tut tut, sir! Monstrous! [he flings away
+towards the gate, his elbows quivering with indignation]
+
+TANNER. Another madman! These men in love should be locked up.
+[He gives Hector up as hopeless, and turns away towards the
+garden, but Malone, taking offence in a new direction, follows
+him and compels him, by the aggressivenes of his tone, to stop].
+
+MALONE. I don't understand this. Is Hector not good enough for
+this lady, pray?
+
+TANNER. My dear sir, the lady is married already. Hector knows
+it; and yet he persists in his infatuation. Take him home and
+lock him up.
+
+MALONE. [bitterly] So this is the high-born social tone I've
+spoilt by my ignorant, uncultivated behavior! Makin love to a
+married woman! [He comes angrily between Hector and Violet, and
+almost bawls into Hector's left ear] You've picked up that habit
+of the British aristocracy, have you?
+
+HECTOR. That's all right. Don't you trouble yourself about that.
+I'll answer for the morality of what I'm doing.
+
+TANNER. [coming forward to Hector's right hand with flashing
+eyes] Well said, Malone! You also see that mere marriage laws are
+not morality! I agree with you; but unfortunately Violet does
+not.
+
+MALONE. I take leave to doubt that, sir. [Turning on Violet] Let
+me tell you, Mrs Robinson, or whatever your right name is, you
+had no right to send that letter to my son when you were the wife
+of another man.
+
+HECTOR. [outraged] This is the last straw. Dad: you have insulted
+my wife.
+
+MALONE. YOUR wife!
+
+TANNER. YOU the missing husband! Another moral impostor! [He
+smites his brow, and collapses into Malone's chair].
+
+MALONE. You've married without my consent!
+
+RAMSDEN. You have deliberately humbugged us, sir!
+
+HECTOR. Here: I have had just about enough of being badgered.
+Violet and I are married: that's the long and the short of it.
+Now what have you got to say--any of you?
+
+MALONE. I know what I've got to say. She's married a beggar.
+
+HECTOR. No; she's married a Worker [his American pronunciation
+imparts an overwhelming intensity to this simple and unpopular
+word]. I start to earn my own living this very afternoon.
+
+MALONE. [sneering angrily] Yes: you're very plucky now, because
+you got your remittance from me yesterday or this morning, I
+reckon. Wait til it's spent. You won't be so full of cheek then.
+
+HECTOR. [producing a letter from his pocketbook] Here it is
+[thrusting it on his father]. Now you just take your remittance
+and yourself out of my life. I'm done with remittances; and I'm
+done with you. I don't sell the privilege of insulting my wife
+for a thousand dollars.
+
+MALONE. [deeply wounded and full of concern] Hector: you
+don't know what poverty is.
+
+HECTOR. [fervidly] Well, I want to know what it is. I want'be a
+Man. Violet: you come along with me, to your own home: I'll see
+you through.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [jumping down from the garden to the lawn and running
+to Hector's left hand] I hope you'll shake hands with me before you
+go, Hector. I admire and respect you more than I can say. [He is
+affected almost to tears as they shake hands].
+
+VIOLET. [also almost in tears, but of vexation] Oh don't be an
+idiot, Tavy. Hector's about as fit to become a workman as you
+are.
+
+TANNER. [rising from his chair on the other ride of Hector] Never
+fear: there's no question of his becoming a navvy, Mrs Malone.
+[To Hector] There's really no difficulty about capital to start
+with. Treat me as a friend: draw on me.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [impulsively] Or on me.
+
+MALONE. [with fierce jealousy] Who wants your dirty money? Who
+should he draw on but his own father? [Tanner and Octavius
+recoil, Octavius rather hurt, Tanner consoled by the solution of
+the money difficulty. Violet looks up hopefully]. Hector: don't
+be rash, my boy. I'm sorry for what I said: I never meant to
+insult Violet: I take it all back. She's just the wife you want:
+there!
+
+HECTOR. [Patting him on the shoulder] Well, that's all right,
+dad. Say no more: we're friends again. Only, I take no money from
+anybody.
+
+MALONE. [pleading abjectly] Don't be hard on me, Hector. I'd
+rather you quarrelled and took the money than made friends and
+starved. You don't know what the world is: I do.
+
+HECTOR. No, no, NO. That's fixed: that's not going to change. [He
+passes his father inexorably by, and goes to Violet]. Come, Mrs
+Malone: you've got to move to the hotel with me, and take your
+proper place before the world.
+
+VIOLET. But I must go in, dear, and tell Davis to pack. Won't you
+go on and make them give you a room overlooking the garden for
+me? I'll join you in half an hour.
+
+HECTOR. Very well. You'll dine with us, Dad, won't you?
+
+MALONE. [eager to conciliate him] Yes, yes.
+
+HECTOR. See you all later. [He waves his hand to Ann, who has now
+been joined by Tanner, Octavius, and Ramsden in the garden, and
+goes out through the little gate, leaving his father and Violet
+together on the lawn].
+
+MALONE. You'll try to bring him to his senses, Violet: I know you
+will.
+
+VIOLET. I had no idea he could be so headstrong. If he goes on
+like that, what can I do?
+
+MALONE. Don't be discurridged: domestic pressure may be slow; but
+it's sure. You'll wear him down. Promise me you will.
+
+VIOLET. I will do my best. Of course I think it's the greatest
+nonsense deliberately making us poor like that.
+
+MALONE. Of course it is.
+
+VIOLET. [after a moment's reflection] You had better give me the
+remittance. He will want it for his hotel bill. I'll see whether
+I can induce him to accept it. Not now, of course, but presently.
+
+MALONE. [eagerly] Yes, yes, yes: that's just the thing [he hands
+her the thousand dollar bill, and adds cunningly] Y'understand
+that this is only a bachelor allowance.
+
+VIOLET. [Coolly] Oh, quite. [She takes it]. Thank you. By the
+way, Mr Malone, those two houses you mentioned--the abbeys.
+
+MALONE. Yes?
+
+VIOLET. Don't take one of them until I've seen it. One never
+knows what may be wrong with these places.
+
+MALONE. I won't. I'll do nothing without consulting you, never
+fear.
+
+VIOLET. [politely, but without a ray of gratitude] Thanks: that
+will be much the best way. [She goes calmly back to the villa,
+escorted obsequiously by Malone to the upper end of the garden].
+
+TANNER. [drawing Ramsden's attention to Malone's cringing
+attitude as he takes leave of Violet] And that poor devil is a
+billionaire! one of the master spirits of the age! Led on a
+string like a pug dog by the first girl who takes the trouble to
+despise him. I wonder will it ever come to that with me. [He
+comes down to the lawn.]
+
+RAMSDEN. [following him] The sooner the better for you.
+
+MALONE. [clapping his hands as he returns through the garden]
+That'll be a grand woman for Hector. I wouldn't exchange her for
+ten duchesses. [He descends to the lawn and comes between Tanner
+and Ramsden].
+
+RAMSDEN. [very civil to the billionaire] It's an unexpected
+pleasure to find you in this corner of the world, Mr Malone. Have
+you come to buy up the Alhambra?
+
+MALONE. Well, I don't say I mightn't. I think I could do better
+with it than the Spanish government. But that's not what I came
+about. To tell you the truth, about a month ago I overheard a
+deal between two men over a bundle of shares. They differed about
+the price: they were young and greedy, and didn't know that if
+the shares were worth what was bid for them they must be worth
+what was asked, the margin being too small to be of any account,
+you see. To amuse meself, I cut in and bought the shares. Well,
+to this day I haven't found out what the business is. The office
+is in this town; and the name is Mendoza, Limited. Now whether
+Mendoza's a mine, or a steamboat line, or a bank, or a patent
+article--
+
+TANNER. He's a man. I know him: his principles are thoroughly
+commercial. Let us take you round the town in our motor, Mr
+Malone, and call on him on the way.
+
+MALONE. If you'll be so kind, yes. And may I ask who--
+
+TANNER. Mr Roebuck Ramsden, a very old friend of your
+daughter-in-law.
+
+MALONE. Happy to meet you, Mr Ramsden.
+
+RAMSDEN. Thank you. Mr Tanner is also one of our circle.
+
+MALONE. Glad to know you also, Mr Tanner.
+
+TANNER. Thanks. [Malone and Ramsden go out very amicably through
+the little gate. Tanner calls to Octavius, who is wandering in
+the garden with Ann] Tavy! [Tavy comes to the steps, Tanner
+whispers loudly to him] Violet has married a financier of
+brigands. [Tanner hurries away to overtake Malone and Ramsden.
+Ann strolls to the steps with an idle impulse to torment
+Octavius].
+
+ANN. Won't you go with them, Tavy?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [tears suddenly flushing his eyes] You cut me to the
+heart, Ann, by wanting me to go [he comes down on the lawn to
+hide his face from her. She follows him caressingly].
+
+ANN. Poor Ricky Ticky Tavy! Poor heart!
+
+OCTAVIUS. It belongs to you, Ann. Forgive me: I must speak of it.
+I love you. You know I love you.
+
+ANN. What's the good, Tavy? You know that my mother is determined
+that I shall marry Jack.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [amazed] Jack!
+
+ANN. It seems absurd, doesn't it?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [with growing resentment] Do you mean to say that Jack
+has been playing with me all this time? That he has been urging
+me not to marry you because he intends to marry you himself?
+
+ANN. [alarmed] No no: you mustn't lead him to believe that I said
+that: I don't for a moment think that Jack knows his own mind.
+But it's clear from my father's will that he wished me to marry
+Jack. And my mother is set on it.
+
+OCTAVIUS. But you are not bound to sacrifice yourself always to
+the wishes of your parents.
+
+ANN. My father loved me. My mother loves me. Surely their wishes
+are a better guide than my own selfishness.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Oh, I know how unselfish you are, Ann. But believe me--
+though I know I am speaking in my own interest--there is another
+side to this question. Is it fair to Jack to marry him if you do
+not love him? Is it fair to destroy my happiness as well as your
+own if you can bring yourself to love me?
+
+ANN. [looking at him with a faint impulse of pity] Tavy, my
+dear, you are a nice creature--a good boy.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [humiliated] Is that all?
+
+ANN. [mischievously in spite of her pity] That's a great deal, I
+assure you. You would always worship the ground I trod on,
+wouldn't you?
+
+OCTAVIUS. I do. It sounds ridiculous; but it's no exaggeration. I
+do; and I always shall.
+
+ANN. Always is a long word, Tavy. You see, I shall have to live
+up always to your idea of my divinity; and I don't think I could do
+that if we were married. But if I marry Jack, you'll never be
+disillusioned--at least not until I grow too old.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I too shall grow old, Ann. And when I am eighty, one
+white hair of the woman I love will make me tremble more than the
+thickest gold tress from the most beautiful young head.
+
+ANN. [quite touched] Oh, that's poetry, Tavy, real poetry. It
+gives me that strange sudden sense of an echo from a former
+existence which always seems to me such a striking proof that we
+have immortal souls.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Do you believe that is true?
+
+ANN. Tavy, if it is to become true you must lose me as well as
+love me.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Oh! [he hastily sits down at the little table and
+covers his face with his hands].
+
+ANN. [with conviction] Tavy: I wouldn't for worlds destroy your
+illusions. I can neither take you nor let you go. I can see
+exactly what will suit you. You must be a sentimental old
+bachelor for my sake.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [desperately] Ann: I'll kill myself.
+
+ANN. Oh no you won't: that wouldn't be kind. You won't have a bad
+time. You will be very nice to women; and you will go a good deal
+to the opera. A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a
+man in London if he has a comfortable income.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [considerably cooled, but believing that he is only
+recovering his self-control] I know you mean to be kind, Ann.
+Jack has persuaded you that cynicism is a good tonic for me. [He
+rises with quiet dignity].
+
+ANN. [studying him slyly] You see, I'm disillusionizing you
+already. That's what I dread.
+
+OCTAVIUS. You do not dread disillusionizing Jack.
+
+ANN. [her face lighting up with mischievous ecstasy--whispering] I
+can't: he has no illusions about me. I shall surprise Jack the
+other way. Getting over an unfavorable impression is ever so much
+easier than living up to an ideal. Oh, I shall enrapture Jack
+sometimes!
+
+OCTAVIUS. [resuming the calm phase of despair, and beginning to
+enjoy his broken heart and delicate attitude without knowing it]
+I don't doubt that. You will enrapture him always. And he--the
+fool!--thinks you would make him wretched.
+
+ANN. Yes: that's the difficulty, so far.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [heroically] Shall I tell him that you love?
+
+ANN. [quickly] Oh no: he'd run away again.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [shocked] Ann: would you marry an unwilling man?
+
+ANN. What a queer creature you are, Tavy! There's no such thing
+as a willing man when you really go for him. [She laughs
+naughtily]. I'm shocking you, I suppose. But you know you are
+really getting a sort of satisfaction already in being out of
+danger yourself.
+
+OCTAVIUS [startled] Satisfaction! [Reproachfully] You say that to
+me!
+
+ANN. Well, if it were really agony, would you ask for more of it?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Have I asked for more of it?
+
+ANN. You have offered to tell Jack that I love him. That's
+self-sacrifice, I suppose; but there must be some satisfaction in
+it. Perhaps it's because you're a poet. You are like the bird
+that presses its breast against the sharp thorn to make itself
+sing.
+
+OCTAVIUS. It's quite simple. I love you; and I want you to be
+happy. You don't love me; so I can't make you happy myself; but I
+can help another man to do it.
+
+ANN. Yes: it seems quite simple. But I doubt if we ever know why
+we do things. The only really simple thing is to go straight for
+what you want and grab it. I suppose I don't love you, Tavy; but
+sometimes I feel as if I should like to make a man of you
+somehow. You are very foolish about women.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [almost coldly] I am content to be what I am in that
+respect.
+
+ANN. Then you must keep away from them, and only dream about
+them. I wouldn't marry you for worlds, Tavy.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I have no hope, Ann: I accept my ill luck. But I don't
+think you quite know how much it hurts.
+
+ANN. You are so softhearted! It's queer that you should be so
+different from Violet. Violet's as hard as nails.
+
+OCTAVIUS. Oh no. I am sure Violet is thoroughly womanly at heart.
+
+ANN. [with some impatience] Why do you say that? Is it unwomanly
+to be thoughtful and businesslike and sensible? Do you want
+Violet to be an idiot--or something worse, like me?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Something worse--like you! What do you mean, Ann?
+
+ANN. Oh well, I don't mean that, of course. But I have a great
+respect for Violet. She gets her own way always.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [sighing] So do you.
+
+ANN. Yes; but somehow she gets it without coaxing--without having
+to make people sentimental about her.
+
+OCTAVIUS. [with brotherly callousness] Nobody could get very
+sentimental about Violet, I think, pretty as she is.
+
+ANN. Oh yes they could, if she made them.
+
+OCTAVIUS. But surely no really nice woman would deliberately
+practise on men's instincts in that way.
+
+ANN. [throwing up her hands] Oh Tavy, Tavy, Ricky Ticky Tavy,
+heaven help the woman who marries you!
+
+OCTAVIUS. [his passion reviving at the name] Oh why, why, why do
+you say that? Don't torment me. I don't understand.
+
+ANN. Suppose she were to tell fibs, and lay snares for men?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Do you think I could marry such a woman--I, who have
+known and loved you?
+
+ANN. Hm! Well, at all events, she wouldn't let you if she were
+wise. So that's settled. And now I can't talk any more. Say you
+forgive me, and that the subject is closed.
+
+OCTAVIUS. I have nothing to forgive; and the subject is closed.
+And if the wound is open, at least you shall never see it bleed.
+
+ANN. Poetic to the last, Tavy. Goodbye, dear. [She pats his
+check; has an impulse to kiss him and then another impulse of
+distaste which prevents her; finally runs away through the garden
+and into the villa].
+
+Octavius again takes refuge at the table, bowing his head on his
+arms and sobbing softly. Mrs Whitefield, who has been pottering
+round the Granada shops, and has a net full of little parcels in
+her hand, comes in through the gate and sees him.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [running to him and lifting his head] What's the
+matter, Tavy? Are you ill?
+
+OCTAVIUS. No, nothing, nothing.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [still holding his head, anxiously] But you're
+crying. Is it about Violet's marriage?
+
+OCTAVIUS. No, no. Who told you about Violet?
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [restoring the head to its owner] I met Roebuck
+and that awful old Irishman. Are you sure you're not ill? What's
+the matter?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [affectionately] It's nothing--only a man's broken
+heart. Doesn't that sound ridiculous?
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. But what is it all about? Has Ann been doing
+anything to you?
+
+OCTAVIUS. It's not Ann's fault. And don't think for a moment that
+I blame you.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [startled] For what?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [pressing her hand consolingly] For nothing. I said I
+didn't blame you.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. But I haven't done anything. What's the matter?
+
+OCTAVIUS. [smiling sadly] Can't you guess? I daresay you are
+right to prefer Jack to me as a husband for Ann; but I love Ann;
+and it hurts rather. [He rises and moves away from her towards the
+middle of the lawn].
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [following him hastily] Does Ann say that I want
+her to marry Jack?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Yes: she has told me.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [thoughtfully] Then I'm very sorry for you, Tavy.
+It's only her way of saying SHE wants to marry Jack. Little she
+cares what I say or what I want!
+
+OCTAVIUS. But she would not say it unless she believed it. Surely
+you don't suspect Ann of--of DECEIT!!
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Well, never mind, Tavy. I don't know which is
+best for a young man: to know too little, like you, or too much,
+like Jack.
+
+Tanner returns.
+
+TANNER. Well, I've disposed of old Malone. I've introduced him to
+Mendoza, Limited; and left the two brigands together to talk it
+out. Hullo, Tavy! anything wrong?
+
+OCTAVIUS. I must go wash my face, I see. [To Mrs Whitefield] Tell
+him what you wish. [To Tanner] You may take it from me, Jack,
+that Ann approves of it.
+
+TANNER. [puzzled by his manner] Approves of what?
+
+OCTAVIUS. Of what Mrs Whitefield wishes. [He goes his way with
+sad dignity to the villa].
+
+TANNER. [to Mrs Whitefield] This is very mysterious. What is it
+you wish? It shall be done, whatever it is.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [with snivelling gratitude] Thank you, Jack. [She
+sits down. Tanner brings the other chair from the table and sits
+close to her with his elbows on his knees, giving her his whole
+attention]. I don't know why it is that other people's children
+are so nice to me, and that my own have so little consideration
+for me. It's no wonder I don't seem able to care for Ann and
+Rhoda as I do for you and Tavy and Violet. It's a very queer
+world. It used to be so straightforward and simple; and now
+nobody seems to think and feel as they ought. Nothing has been
+right since that speech that Professor Tyndall made at Belfast.
+
+TANNER. Yes: life is more complicated than we used to think. But
+what am I to do for you?
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. That's just what I want to tell you. Of course
+you'll marry Ann whether I like it myself or not--
+
+TANNER. [starting] It seems to me that I shall presently be
+married to Ann whether I like it myself or not.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [peacefully] Oh, very likely you will: you know
+what she is when she has set her mind on anything. But don't put
+it on me: that's all I ask. Tavy has just let out that she's been
+saying that I am making her marry you; and the poor boy is
+breaking his heart about it; for he is in love with her himself,
+though what he sees in her so wonderful, goodness knows: I don't.
+It's no use telling Tavy that Ann puts things into people's heads
+by telling them that I want them when the thought of them never
+crossed my mind. It only sets Tavy against me. But you know
+better than that. So if you marry her, don't put the blame on me.
+
+TANNER. [emphatically] I haven't the slightest intention of
+marrying her.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [slyly] She'd suit you better than Tavy. She'd
+meet her match in you, Jack. I'd like to see her meet her match.
+
+TANNER. No man is a match for a woman, except with a poker and a
+pair of hobnailed boots. Not always even then. Anyhow, I can't
+take the poker to her. I should be a mere slave.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. No: she's afraid of you. At all events, you would
+tell her the truth about herself. She wouldn't be able to slip
+out of it as she does with me.
+
+TANNER. Everybody would call me a brute if I told Ann the truth
+about herself in terms of her own moral code. To begin with, Ann
+says things that are not strictly true.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. I'm glad somebody sees she is not an angel.
+
+TANNER. In short--to put it as a husband would put it when
+exasperated to the point of speaking out--she is a liar. And
+since she has plunged Tavy head over ears in love with her
+without any intention of marrying him, she is a coquette,
+according to the standard definition of a coquette as a woman who
+rouses passions she has no intention of gratifying. And as she
+has now reduced you to the point of being willing to sacrifice me
+at the altar for the mere satisfaction of getting me to call her
+a liar to her face, I may conclude that she is a bully as well.
+She can't bully men as she bullies women; so she habitually and
+unscrupulously uses her personal fascination to make men give her
+whatever she wants. That makes her almost something for which I
+know no polite name.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [in mild expostulation] Well, you can't expect
+perfection, Jack.
+
+TANNER. I don't. But what annoys me is that Ann does. I know
+perfectly well that all this about her being a liar and a bully
+and a coquette and so forth is a trumped-up moral indictment
+which might be brought against anybody. We all lie; we all bully
+as much as we dare; we all bid for admiration without the least
+intention of earning it; we all get as much rent as we can out of
+our powers of fascination. If Ann would admit this I shouldn't
+quarrel with her. But she won't. If she has children she'll take
+advantage of their telling lies to amuse herself by whacking
+them. If another woman makes eyes at me, she'll refuse to know a
+coquette. She will do just what she likes herself whilst
+insisting on everybody else doing what the conventional code
+prescribes. In short, I can stand everything except her
+confounded hypocrisy. That's what beats me.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [carried away by the relief of hearing her own
+opinion so eloquently expressed] Oh, she is a hypocrite. She is:
+she is. Isn't she?
+
+TANNER. Then why do you want to marry me to her?
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [querulously] There now! put it on me, of course.
+I never thought of it until Tavy told me she said I did. But, you
+know, I'm very fond of Tavy: he's a sort of son to me; and I
+don't want him to be trampled on and made wretched.
+
+TANNER. Whereas I don't matter, I suppose.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Oh, you are different, somehow: you are able to
+take care of yourself. You'd serve her out. And anyhow, she must
+marry somebody.
+
+TANNER. Aha! there speaks the life instinct. You detest her; but
+you feel that you must get her married.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [rising, shocked] Do you mean that I detest my
+own daughter! Surely you don't believe me to be so wicked and
+unnatural as that, merely because I see her faults.
+
+TANNER. [cynically] You love her, then?
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Why, of course I do. What queer things you say,
+Jack! We can't help loving our own blood relations.
+
+TANNER. Well, perhaps it saves unpleasantness to say so. But for
+my part, I suspect that the tables of consanguinity have a
+natural basis in a natural repugnance [he rises].
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. You shouldn't say things like that, Jack. I hope
+you won't tell Ann that I have been speaking to you. I only
+wanted to set myself right with you and Tavy. I couldn't sit
+mumchance and have everything put on me.
+
+TANNER. [politely] Quite so.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [dissatisfied] And now I've only made matters
+worse. Tavy's angry with me because I don't worship Ann. And when
+it's been put into my head that Ann ought to marry you, what can
+I say except that it would serve her right?
+
+TANNER. Thank you.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Now don't be silly and twist what I say into
+something I don't mean. I ought to have fair play--
+
+Ann comes from the villa, followed presently by Violet, who is
+dressed for driving.
+
+ANN. [coming to her mother's right hand with threatening suavity]
+Well, mamma darling, you seem to be having a delightful chat with
+Jack. We can hear you all over the place.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [appalled] Have you overheard--
+
+TANNER. Never fear: Ann is only--well, we were discussing that
+habit of hers just now. She hasn't heard a word.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [stoutly] I don't care whether she has or not: I
+have a right to say what I please.
+
+VIOLET. [arriving on the lawn and coming between Mrs Whitefield
+and Tanner] I've come to say goodbye. I'm off for my honeymoon.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [crying] Oh don't say that, Violet. And no
+wedding, no breakfast, no clothes, nor anything.
+
+VIOLET. [petting her] It won't be for long.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Don't let him take you to America. Promise me
+that you won't.
+
+VIOLET. [very decidedly] I should think not, indeed. Don't cry,
+dear: I'm only going to the hotel.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. But going in that dress, with your luggage, makes
+one realize--[she chokes, and then breaks out again] How I wish
+you were my daughter, Violet!
+
+VIOLET. [soothing her] There, there: so I am. Ann will be
+jealous.
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Ann doesn't care a bit for me.
+
+ANN. Fie, mother! Come, now: you mustn't cry any more: you know
+Violet doesn't like it [Mrs Whitefzeld dries her eyes, and
+subsides].
+
+VIOLET. Goodbye, Jack.
+
+TANNER. Goodbye, Violet.
+
+VIOLET. The sooner you get married too, the better. You will be
+much less misunderstood.
+
+TANNER. [restively] I quite expect to get married in the course
+of the afternoon. You all seem to have set your minds on it.
+
+VIOLET. You might do worse. [To Mrs Whitefield: putting her arm
+round her] Let me take you to the hotel with me: the drive will
+do you good. Come in and get a wrap. [She takes her towards the
+villa].
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. [as they go up through the garden] I don't know
+what I shall do when you are gone, with no one but Ann in the
+house; and she always occupied with the men! It's not to be
+expected that your husband will care to be bothered with an old
+woman like me. Oh, you needn't tell me: politeness is all very
+well; but I know what people think--[She talks herself and Violet
+out of sight and hearing].
+
+Ann, musing on Violet's opportune advice, approaches Tanner;
+examines him humorously for a moment from toe to top; and finally
+delivers her opinion.
+
+ANN. Violet is quite right. You ought to get married.
+
+TANNER. [explosively] Ann: I will not marry you. Do you  hear? I
+won't, won't, won't, won't, WON'T marry you.
+
+ANN. [placidly] Well, nobody axd you, sir she said, sir she said,
+sir she said. So that's settled.
+
+TANNER. Yes, nobody has asked me; but everybody treats the thing
+as settled. It's in the air. When we meet, the others go away on
+absurd pretexts to leave us alone together. Ramsden no longer
+scowls at me: his eye beams, as if he were already giving you
+away to me in church. Tavy refers me to your mother and gives me
+his blessing. Straker openly treats you as his future employer:
+it was he who first told me of it.
+
+ANN. Was that why you ran away?
+
+TANNER. Yes, only to be stopped by a lovesick brigand and run
+down like a truant schoolboy.
+
+ANN. Well, if you don't want to be married, you needn't be [she
+turns away from him and sits down, much at her ease].
+
+TANNER. [following her] Does any man want to be hanged? Yet men
+let themselves be hanged without a struggle for life, though they
+could at least give the chaplain a black eye. We do the world's
+will, not our own. I have a frightful feeling that I shall let
+myself be married because it is the world's will that you should
+have a husband.
+
+ANN. I daresay I shall, someday.
+
+TANNER. But why me--me of all men? Marriage is to me apostasy,
+profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood,
+sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious
+capitulation, acceptance of defeat. I shall decay like a thing
+that has served its purpose and is done with; I shall change from
+a man with a future to a man with a past; I shall see in the
+greasy eyes of all the other husbands their relief at the arrival
+of a new prisoner to share their ignominy. The young men will
+scorn me as one who has sold out: to the young women I, who have
+always been an enigma and a possibility, shall be merely somebody
+else's property--and damaged goods at that: a secondhand man at
+best.
+
+ANN. Well, your wife can put on a cap and make herself ugly to
+keep you in countenance, like my grandmother.
+
+TANNER. So that she may make her triumph more insolent by
+publicly throwing away the bait the moment the trap snaps on the
+victim!
+
+ANN. After all, though, what difference would it make? Beauty is
+all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it
+has been in the house three days? I thought our pictures very
+lovely when papa bought them; but I haven't looked at them for
+years. You never bother about my looks: you are too well used to
+me. I might be the umbrella stand.
+
+TANNER. You lie, you vampire: you lie.
+
+ANN. Flatterer. Why are you trying to fascinate me, Jack, if you
+don't want to marry me?
+
+TANNER. The Life Force. I am in the grip of the Life Force.
+
+ANN. I don't understand in the least: it sounds like the Life
+Guards.
+
+TANNER. Why don't you marry Tavy? He is willing. Can you not be
+satisfied unless your prey struggles?
+
+ANN. [turning to him as if to let him into a secret] Tavy will
+never marry. Haven't you noticed that that sort of man never
+marries?
+
+TANNER. What! a man who idolizes women  who sees nothing in
+nature but romantic scenery for love duets! Tavy, the chivalrous,
+the faithful, the tenderhearted and true! Tavy never marry! Why,
+he was born to be swept up by the first pair of blue eyes he
+meets in the street.
+
+ANN. Yes, I know. All the same, Jack, men like that always live
+in comfortable bachelor lodgings with broken hearts, and are
+adored by their landladies, and never get married. Men like you
+always get married.
+
+TANNER. [Smiting his brow] How frightfully, horribly true! It has
+been staring me in the face all my life; and I never saw it
+before.
+
+ANN. Oh, it's the same with women. The poetic temperament's a
+very nice temperament, very amiable, very harmless and poetic, I
+daresay; but it's an old maid's temperament.
+
+TANNER. Barren. The Life Force passes it by.
+
+ANN. If that's what you mean by the Life Force, yes.
+
+TANNER. You don't care for Tavy?
+
+ANN. [looking round carefully to make sure that Tavy is not
+within earshot] No.
+
+TANNER. And you do care for me?
+
+ANN. [rising quietly and shaking her finger at him] Now Jack!
+Behave yourself.
+
+TANNER. Infamous, abandoned woman! Devil!
+
+ANN. Boa-constrictor! Elephant!
+
+TANNER. Hypocrite!
+
+ANN. [Softly] I must be, for my future husband's sake.
+
+TANNER. For mine! [Correcting himself savagely] I mean for his.
+
+ANN.[ignoring the correction] Yes, for yours. You had better
+marry what you call a hypocrite, Jack. Women who are not
+hypocrites go about in rational dress and are insulted and get
+into all sorts of hot water. And then their husbands get dragged
+in too, and live in continual dread of fresh complications.
+Wouldn't you prefer a wife you could depend on?
+
+TANNER. No, a thousand times no: hot water is the revolutionist's
+element. You clean men as you clean milkpails, by scalding them.
+
+ANN. Cold water has its uses too. It's healthy.
+
+TANNER. [despairingly] Oh, you are witty: at the supreme moment
+the Life Force endows you with every quality. Well, I too can be
+a hypocrite. Your father's will appointed me your guardian, not
+your suitor. I shall be faithful to my trust.
+
+ANN. [in low siren tones] He asked me who would I have as my
+guardian before he made that will. I chose you!
+
+TANNER. The will is yours then! The trap was laid from the
+beginning.
+
+ANN. [concentrating all her magic] From the beginning from our
+childhood--for both of us--by the Life Force.
+
+TANNER. I will not marry you. I will not marry you.
+
+ANN. Oh; you will, you will.
+
+TANNER. I tell you, no, no, no.
+
+ANN. I tell you, yes, yes, yes.
+
+TANNER. NO.
+
+ANN. [coaxing--imploring--almost exhausted] Yes. Before it is too
+late for repentance. Yes.
+
+TANNER. [struck by the echo from the past] When did all this
+happen to me before? Are we two dreaming?
+
+ANN. [suddenly losing her courage, with an anguish that she does
+not conceal] No. We are awake; and you have said no: that is all.
+
+TANNER. [brutally] Well?
+
+ANN. Well, I made a mistake: you do not love me.
+
+TANNER. [seizing her in his arms] It is false: I love you. The
+Life Force enchants me: I have the whole world in my arms when I
+clasp you. But I am fighting for my freedom, for my honor, for
+myself, one and indivisible.
+
+ANN. Your happiness will be worth them all.
+
+TANNER. You would sell freedom and honor and self for happiness?
+
+ANN. It will not be all happiness for me. Perhaps death.
+
+TANNER. [groaning] Oh, that clutch holds and hurts. What have you
+grasped in me? Is there a father's heart as well as a mother's?
+
+ANN. Take care, Jack: if anyone comes while we are like this, you
+will have to marry me.
+
+TANNER. If we two stood now on the edge of a precipice, I would
+hold you tight and jump.
+
+ANN. [panting, failing more and more under the strain] Jack: let
+me go. I have dared so frightfully--it is lasting longer than I
+thought. Let me go: I can't bear it.
+
+TANNER. Nor I. Let it kill us.
+
+ANN. Yes: I don't care. I am at the end of my forces. I don't
+care. I think I am going to faint.
+
+At this moment Violet and Octavius come from the villa with Mrs
+Whitefield, who is wrapped up for driving. Simultaneously Malone
+and Ramsden, followed by Mendoza and Straker, come in through the
+little gate in the paling. Tanner shamefacedly releases Ann, who
+raises her hand giddily to her forehead.
+
+MALONE. Take care. Something's the matter with the lady.
+
+RAMSDEN. What does this mean?
+
+VIOLET. [running between Ann and Tanner] Are you ill?
+
+ANN. [reeling, with a supreme effort] I have promised to marry
+Jack. [She swoons. Violet kneels by her and chafes her band.
+Tanner runs round to her other hand, and tries to lift her bead.
+Octavius goes to Violet's assistance, but does not know what to
+do. Mrs Whitefield hurries back into the villa. Octavius, Malone
+and Ramsden run to Ann and crowd round her, stooping to assist.
+Straker coolly comes to Ann's feet, and Mendoza to her head, both
+upright and self-possessed].
+
+STRAKER. Now then, ladies and gentlemen: she don't want a crowd
+round her: she wants air--all the air she can git. If you please,
+gents-- [Malone and Ramsden allow him to drive them gently past
+Ann and up the lawn towards the garden, where Octavius, who has
+already become conscious of his uselessness, joins them. Straker,
+following them up, pauses for a moment to instruct Tanner]. Don't
+lift er ed, Mr Tanner: let it go flat so's the blood can run back
+into it.
+
+MENDOZA. He is right, Mr Tanner. Trust to the air of the Sierra.
+[He withdraws delicately to the garden steps].
+
+TANNER. [rising] I yield to your superior knowledge of physiology,
+Henry. [He withdraws to the corner of the lawn; and Octavius
+immediately hurries down to him].
+
+TAVY. [aside to Tanner, grasping his hand] Jack: be very happy.
+
+TANNER. [aside to Tavy] I never asked her. It is a trap for me.
+[He goes up the lawn towards the garden. Octavius remains
+petrified].
+
+MENDOZA. [intercepting Mrs Whitefield, who comes from the villa
+with a glass of brandy] What is this, madam [he takes it from
+her]?
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. A little brandy.
+
+MENDOZA. The worst thing you could give her. Allow me. [He
+swallows it]. Trust to the air of the Sierra, madam.
+
+For a moment the men all forget Ann and stare at Mendoza.
+
+ANN. [in Violet's ear, clutching  her round the neck] Violet,
+did Jack say anything when I fainted?
+
+VIOLET. No.
+
+ANN. Ah! [with a sigh of intense relief she relapses].
+
+MRS WHITEFIELD. Oh, she's fainted again.
+
+They are about to rush back to her; but Mendoza stops them with a
+warning gesture.
+
+ANN. [supinej No I haven't. I'm quite happy.
+
+TANNER. [suddenly walking determinedly to her, and snatching her
+hand from Violet to feel her pulse] Why, her pulse is positively
+bounding. Come, getup. What nonsense! Up with you. [He gets her
+up summarily].
+
+ANN. Yes: I feel strong enough now. But you very nearly killed
+me, Jack, for all that.
+
+MALONE. A rough wooer, eh? They're the best sort, Miss
+Whitefield. I congratulate Mr Tanner; and I hope to meet you and
+him as frequent guests at the Abbey.
+
+ANN. Thank you. [She goes past Malone to Octavius] Ricky Ticky
+Tavy: congratulate me. [Aside to him] I want to make you cry for
+the last time.
+
+TAVY. [steadfastly] No more tears. I am happy in your happiness.
+And I believe in you in spite of everything.
+
+RAMSDEN. [coming between Malone and Tanner] You are a happy man,
+Jack Tanner. I envy you.
+
+MENDOZA. [advancing between Violet and Tanner] Sir: there are two
+tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The
+other is to get it. Mine and yours, sir.
+
+TANNER. Mr Mendoza: I have no heart's desires. Ramsden: it is
+very easy for you to call me a happy man: you are only a
+spectator. I am one of the principals; and I know better. Ann:
+stop tempting Tavy, and come back to me.
+
+ANN. [complying] You are absurd, Jack. [She takes his proffered
+arm].
+
+TANNER. [continuing] I solemnly say that I am not a happy man.
+Ann looks happy; but she is only triumphant, successful,
+victorious. That is not happiness, but the price for which the
+strong sell their happiness. What we have both done this
+afternoon is to renounce tranquillity, above all renounce the
+romantic possibilities of an unknown future, for the cares of a
+household and a family. I beg that no man may seize the occasion
+to get half drunk and utter imbecile speeches and coarse
+pleasantries at my expense. We propose to furnish our own house
+according to our own taste; and I hereby give notice that the
+seven or eight travelling clocks, the four or five dressing
+cases, the salad bowls, the carvers and fish slices, the copy of
+Tennyson in extra morocco, and all the other articles you are
+preparing to heap upon us, will be instantly sold, and the
+proceeds devoted to circulating free copies of the
+Revolutionist's Handbook. The wedding will take place three days
+after our return to England, by special license, at the office of
+the district superintendent registrar, in the presence of my
+solicitor and his clerk, who, like his clients, will be in
+ordinary walking dress.
+
+VIOLET. [with intense conviction] You are a brute, Jack.
+
+ANN. (looking at him with fond pride and caressing his arm] Never
+mind her, dear. Go on talking.
+
+TANNER. Talking!
+
+Universal laughter.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Man and Superman, by Bernard Shaw
+
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