Misalliance (2/2) (1/12)
Johnny Hallo! Where’s your luggage?
Bentley I left it at the station. I’ve walked up from Haslemere. He goes to the hat stand and hangs up his hat.
Johnny Shortly. Oh! And who’s to fetch it?
Bentley Don’t know. Don’t care. Providence, probably. If not, your mother will have it fetched.
Johnny Not her business, exactly, is it?
Bentley Returning to the pavilion. Of course not. That’s why one loves her for doing it. Look here: chuck away your silly weekend novel, and talk to a chap. After a week in that filthy office my brain is simply blue-mouldy. Lets argue about something intellectual. He throws himself into the wicker chair on Johnny’s right.
Johnny Straightening up in the swing with a yell of protest. No. Now seriously, Bunny, I’ve come down here to have a pleasant weekend; and I’m not going to stand your confounded arguments. If you want to argue, get out of this and go over to the Congregationalist minister’s. He’s a nailer at arguing. He likes it.
Bentley You can’t argue with a person when his livelihood depends on his not letting you convert him. And would you mind not calling me Bunny. My name is Bentley Summerhays, which you please.
Johnny What’s the matter with Bunny?
Bentley It puts me in a false position. Have you ever considered the fact that I was an afterthought?
Johnny An afterthought? What do you mean by that?
Bentley I⁠—
Johnny No, stop: I don’t want to know. It’s only a dodge to start an argument.
Bentley Don’t be afraid: it won’t overtax your brain. My father was 44 when I was born. My mother was 41. There was twelve years between me and the next eldest. I was unexpected. I was probably unintentional. My brothers and sisters are not the least like me. They’re the regular thing that you always get in the first batch from young parents: quite pleasant, ordinary, do-the-regular-thing sort: all body and no brains, like you.
Johnny Thank you.
Bentley Don’t mention it, old chap. Now I’m different. By the time I was born, the old couple knew something. So I came out all brains and no more body than is absolutely necessary. I am really a good deal older than you, though you were born ten years sooner. Everybody feels that when they hear us talk; consequently, though it’s quite natural to hear me calling you Johnny, it sounds ridiculous and unbecoming for you to call me Bunny. He rises.
Johnny Does it, by George? You stop me doing it if you can: that’s all.
Bentley If you go on doing it after I’ve asked you not, you’ll feel an awful swine. He strolls away carelessly to the sideboard with his eye on the sponge cakes. At least I should; but I suppose you’re not so particular.
Johnny Rising vengefully and following Bentley, who is forced to turn and listen. I’ll tell you what it is, my boy: you want a good talking to; and I’m going to give it to you. If you think that because your father’s a K.C.B., and you want to marry my sister, you can make yourself as nasty as you please and say what you like, you’re mistaken. Let me tell you that except Hypatia, not one person in this house is in favor of her marrying you; and I don’t believe she’s happy about it herself. The match isn’t settled yet: don’t forget that. You’re on trial in the office because the Governor isn’t giving his daughter money for an idle man to live on her. You’re on trial here because my mother thinks a girl should know what a man is like in the house before she marries him. That’s been going on for two months now; and what’s the result? You’ve got yourself thoroughly disliked in the office; and you’re getting yourself thoroughly disliked here, all through your bad manners and your conceit, and the damned impudence you think clever.
Bentley Deeply wounded and trying hard to control himself. That’s enough, thank you. You don’t suppose, I hope, that I should have come down if I had known that that was how you felt about me. He makes for the vestibule door.
Johnny Collaring him. No: you don’t run away. I’m going to have this out with you. Sit down: d’y’ hear? Bentley* attempts to go with dignity. Johnny* slings him into a chair at the writing table, where he sits, bitterly humiliated, but afraid to speak lest he should burst into tears. That’s the advantage of having more body than brains, you see: it enables me to teach you manners; and I’m going to do it too. You’re a spoilt young pup; and you need a jolly good licking. And if you’re not careful you’ll get it: I’ll see to that next time you call me a swine.
Bentley I didn’t call you a swine. But bursting into a fury of tears you are a swine: you’re a beast: you’re a brute: you’re a cad: you’re a liar: you’re a bully: I should like to wring your damned neck for you.
Johnny With a derisive laugh. Try it, my son. Bentley gives an inarticulate sob of rage. Fighting isn’t in your line. You’re too small and you’re too childish. I always suspected that your cleverness wouldn’t come to very much when it was brought up against something solid: some decent chap’s fist, for instance.
Bentley I hope your beastly fist may come up against a mad bull or a prizefighter’s nose, or something solider than me. I don’t care about your fist; but if everybody here dislikes me⁠—He is checked by a sob. Well, I don’t care. Trying to recover himself. I’m sorry I intruded: I didn’t know. Breaking down again. Oh you beast! you pig! Swine, swine, swine, swine, swine! Now!
Johnny All right, my lad, all right. Sling your mud as hard as you please: it won’t stick to me. What I want to know is this. How is it that your father, who I suppose is the strongest man England has produced in our time⁠—
Bentley You got that out of your halfpenny paper. A lot you know about him!
Johnny I don’t set up to be able to do anything but admire him and appreciate him and be proud of him as an Englishman. If it wasn’t for my respect for him, I wouldn’t have stood your cheek for two days, let alone two months. But what I can’t understand is why he didn’t lick it out of you when you were a kid. For twenty-five years he kept a place twice as big as England in order: a place full of seditious coffee-colored heathens and pestilential white agitators in the middle of a lot of savage tribes. And yet he couldn’t keep you in order. I don’t set up to be half the man your father undoubtedly is; but, by George, it’s lucky for you you were not my son. I don’t hold with my own father’s views about corporal punishment being wrong. It’s necessary for some people; and I’d have tried it on you until you first learnt to howl and then to behave yourself.
Bentley Contemptuously. Yes: behavior wouldn’t come naturally to your son, would it?
Johnny Stung into sudden violence. Now you keep a civil tongue in your head. I’ll stand none of your snobbery. I’m just as proud of Tarleton’s Underwear as you are of your father’s title and his K.C.B., and all the rest of it. My father began in a little hole of a shop in Leeds no bigger than our pantry down the passage there. He⁠—
Bentley Oh yes: I know. I’ve read it. The Romance of Business, or the Story of Tarleton’s Underwear. Please Take One! I took one the day after I first met Hypatia. I went and bought half a dozen unshrinkable vests for her sake.
Johnny Well: did they shrink?
Bentley Oh, don’t be a fool.
Johnny Never mind whether I’m a fool or not. Did they shrink? That’s the point. Were they worth the money?
Bentley I couldn’t wear them: do you think my skin’s as thick as your customers’ hides? I’d as soon have dressed myself in a nutmeg grater.
Johnny Pity your father didn’t give your thin skin a jolly good lacing with a cane⁠—!
Bentley Pity you haven’t got more than one idea! If you want to know, they did try that on me once, when I was a small kid. A silly governess did it. I yelled fit to bring down the house and went into convulsions and brain fever and that sort of thing for three weeks. So the old girl got the sack; and serve her right! After that, I was let do what I like. My father didn’t want me to grow up a broken-spirited spaniel, which is your idea of a man, I suppose.
Johnny Jolly good thing for you that my father made you come into the office and show what you were made of. And it didn’t come to much: let me tell you that. When the Governor asked me where I thought we ought to put you, I said, “Make him the Office Boy.” The Governor said you were too green. And so you were.
Bentley I daresay. So would you be pretty green if you were shoved into my father’s set. I picked up your silly business in a fortnight. You’ve been at it ten years; and you haven’t picked it up yet.
Johnny Don’t talk rot, child. You know you simply make me pity you.
Bentley Romance of Business indeed! The real romance of Tarleton’s business is the story that you understand anything about it. You never could explain any mortal thing about it to me when I asked you. “See what was done the last time”: that was the beginning and the end of your wisdom. You’re nothing but a turnspit.
Johnny A what!
Bentley A turnspit. If your father hadn’t made a roasting jack for you to turn, you’d be earning twenty-four shillings a week behind a counter.
Johnny If you don’t take that back and apologize for your bad manners, I’ll give you as good a hiding as ever⁠—
Bentley Help! Johnny’s beating me! Oh! Murder! He throws himself on the ground, uttering piercing yells.
Johnny Don’t be a fool. Stop that noise, will you. I’m not going to touch you. Sh⁠—sh⁠—
Hypatia* rushes in through the inner door, followed by Mrs. Tarleton, and throws herself on her knees by Bentley. Mrs. Tarleton, whose knees are stiffer, bends over him and tries to lift him. Mrs. Tarleton is a shrewd and motherly old lady who has been pretty in her time, and is still very pleasant and likeable and unaffected. Hypatia* is a typical English girl of a sort never called typical: that is, she has an opaque white skin, black hair, large dark eyes with black brows and lashes, curved lips, swift glances and movements that flash out of a waiting stillness, boundless energy and audacity held in leash.
Hypatia Pouncing on Bentley with no very gentle hand. Bentley: what’s the matter? Don’t cry like that: what’s the use? What’s happened?
Mrs. Tarleton Are you ill, child? They get him up. There, there, pet! It’s all right: don’t cry: They put him into a chair. there! there! there! Johnny will go for the doctor; and he’ll give you something nice to make it well.
Hypatia What has happened, Johnny?
Mrs. Tarleton Was it a wasp?
Bentley Impatiently. Wasp be dashed!
Mrs. Tarleton Oh Bunny! that was a naughty word.
Bentley Yes, I know: I beg your pardon. He rises, and extricates himself from them. That’s all right. Johnny frightened me. You know how easy it is to hurt me; and I’m too small to defend myself against Johnny.
Mrs. Tarleton Johnny: how often have I told you that you must not bully the little ones. I thought you’d outgrown all that.
Hypatia Angrily. I do declare, mamma, that Johnny’s brutality makes it impossible to live in the house with him.
Johnny Deeply hurt. It’s twenty-seven years, mother, since you had that row with me for licking Robert and giving Hypatia a black eye because she bit me. I promised you then that I’d never raise my hand to one of them again; and I’ve never broken my word. And now because this young whelp begins to cry out before he’s hurt, you treat me as if I were a brute and a savage.
Mrs. Tarleton No dear, not a savage; but you know you must not call our visitor naughty names.
Bentley Oh, let him alone⁠—
Johnny Fiercely. Don’t you interfere between my mother and me: d’y’ hear?
Hypatia Johnny’s lost his temper, mother. We’d better go. Come, Bentley.
Mrs. Tarleton Yes: that will be best. To Bentley. Johnny doesn’t mean any harm, dear: he’ll be himself presently. Come.
The two ladies go out through the inner door with Bentley, who turns at the door to grin at Johnny as he goes out.
Johnny*, left alone, clenches his fists and grinds his teeth, but can find no relief in that way for his rage. After choking and stamping for a moment, he makes for the vestibule door. It opens before he reaches it; and Lord Summerhays comes in. Johnny glares at him, speechless. Lord Summerhays takes in the situation, and quickly takes the punch bowl from the sideboard and offers it to Johnny*.
Lord Summerhays Smash it. Don’t hesitate: it’s an ugly thing. Smash it: hard. Johnny, with a stifled yell, dashes it in pieces, and then sits down and mops his brow. Feel better now? Johnny nods. I know only one person alive who could drive me to the point of having either to break china or commit murder; and that person is my son Bentley. Was it he? Johnny nods again, not yet able to speak. As the car stopped I heard a yell which is only too familiar to me. It generally means that some infuriated person is trying to thrash Bentley. Nobody has ever succeeded, though almost everybody has tried. *He seats himself comfortably close to the writing table, and sets to work to collect the fragments of the punch bowl in the wastepaper basket whilst Johnny*, with diminishing difficulty, collects himself. Bentley is a problem which I confess I have never been able to solve. He was born to be a great success at the age of fifty. Most Englishmen of his class seem to be born to be great successes at the age of twenty-four at most. The domestic problem for me is how to endure Bentley until he is fifty. The problem for the nation is how to get itself governed by men whose growth is arrested when they are little more than college lads. Bentley doesn’t really mean to be offensive. You can always make him cry by telling him you don’t like him. Only, he cries so loud that the experiment should be made in the open air: in the middle of Salisbury Plain if possible. He has a hard and penetrating intellect and a remarkable power of looking facts in the face; but unfortunately, being very young, he has no idea of how very little of that sort of thing most of us can stand. On the other hand, he is frightfully sensitive and even affectionate; so that he probably gets as much as he gives in the way of hurt feelings. You’ll excuse me rambling on like this about my son.
Johnny Who has pulled himself together. You did it on purpose. I wasn’t quite myself: I needed a moment to pull round: thank you.
Lord Summerhays Not at all. Is your father at home?
Johnny No: he’s opening one of his free libraries. That’s another nice little penny gone. He’s mad on reading. He promised another free library last week. It’s ruinous. It’ll hit you as well as me when Bunny marries Hypatia. When all Hypatia’s money is thrown away on libraries, where will Bunny come in? Can’t you stop him?
Lord Summerhays I’m afraid not. He’s a perfect whirlwind. Indefatigable at public work. Wonderful man, I think.
Johnny Oh, public work! He does too much of it. It’s really a sort of laziness, getting away from your own serious business to amuse yourself with other people’s. Mind: I don’t say there isn’t another side to it. It has its value as an advertisement. It makes useful acquaintances and leads to valuable business connections. But it takes his mind off the main chance; and he overdoes it.
Lord Summerhays The danger of public business is that it never ends. A man may kill himself at it.