Mrs. Warren’s Profession · Act I (2/2) (1/2)
A gentleman walking on the common comes into sight from behind the cottage. He is hardly past middle age, with something of the artist about him, unconventionally but carefully dressed, and clean-shaven except for a moustache, with an eager susceptible face and very amiable and considerate manners. He has silky black hair, with waves of grey and white in it. His eyebrows are white, his moustache black. He seems not certain of his way. He looks over the palings; takes stock of the place; and sees the young lady.
The Gentleman Taking off his hat. I beg your pardon. Can you direct me to Hindhead View⁠—Mrs. Alison’s?
The Young Lady Glancing up from her book. This is Mrs. Alison’s. She resumes her work.
The Gentleman Indeed! Perhaps⁠—may I ask are you Miss Vivie Warren?
The Young Lady Sharply, as she turns on her elbow to get a good look at him. Yes.
The Gentleman Daunted and conciliatory. I’m afraid I appear intrusive. My name is Praed. Vivie at once throws her books upon the chair, and gets out of the hammock. Oh, pray don’t let me disturb you.
Vivie Striding to the gate and opening it for him. Come in, Mr. Praed. He comes in. Glad to see you. She proffers her hand and takes his with a resolute and hearty grip. She is an attractive specimen of the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman. Age twenty-two. Prompt, strong, confident, self-possessed. Plain businesslike dress, but not dowdy. She wears a chatelaine at her belt, with a fountain pen and a paper knife among its pendants.
Praed Very kind of you indeed, Miss Warren. She shuts the gate with a vigorous slam. He passes in to the middle of the garden, exercising his fingers, which are slightly numbed by her greeting. Has your mother arrived?
Vivie Quickly, evidently scenting aggression. Is she coming?
Praed Surprised. Didn’t you expect us?
Vivie No.
Praed Now, goodness me, I hope I’ve not mistaken the day. That would be just like me, you know. Your mother arranged that she was to come down from London and that I was to come over from Horsham to be introduced to you.
Vivie Not at all pleased. Did she? H’m! My mother has rather a trick of taking me by surprise⁠—to see how I behave myself while she’s away, I suppose. I fancy I shall take my mother very much by surprise one of these days, if she makes arrangements that concern me without consulting me beforehand. She hasn’t come.
Praed Embarrassed. I’m really very sorry.
Vivie Throwing off her displeasure. It’s not your fault, Mr. Praed, is it? And I’m very glad you’ve come. You are the only one of my mother’s friends I have ever asked her to bring to see me.
Praed Relieved and delighted. Oh, now this is really very good of you, Miss Warren!
Vivie Will you come indoors; or would you rather sit out here and talk?
Praed It will be nicer out here, don’t you think?
Vivie Then I’ll go and get you a chair. She goes to the porch for a garden chair.
Praed Following her. Oh, pray, pray! Allow me. He lays hands on the chair.
Vivie Letting him take it. Take care of your fingers; they’re rather dodgy things, those chairs. She goes across to the chair with the books on it; pitches them into the hammock; and brings the chair forward with one swing.
Praed Who has just unfolded his chair. Oh, now do let me take that hard chair. I like hard chairs.
Vivie So do I. Sit down, Mr. Praed. This invitation she gives with a genial peremptoriness, his anxiety to please her clearly striking her as a sign of weakness of character on his part. But he does not immediately obey.
Praed By the way, though, hadn’t we better go to the station to meet your mother?
Vivie Coolly. Why? She knows the way. Praed hesitates, and then sits down in the garden chair, rather disconcerted. Do you know, you are just like what I expected. I hope you are disposed to be friends with me?
Praed Again beaming. Thank you, my dear Miss Warren; thank you. Dear me! I’m so glad your mother hasn’t spoilt you!
Vivie How?
Praed Well, in making you too conventional. You know, my dear Miss Warren, I am a born anarchist. I hate authority. It spoils the relations between parent and child; even between mother and daughter. Now I was always afraid that your mother would strain her authority to make you very conventional. It’s such a relief to find that she hasn’t.
Vivie Oh! have I been behaving unconventionally?
Praed Oh, no: oh, dear no. At least, not conventionally unconventionally, you understand. She nods and sits down. He goes on, with a cordial outburst. But it was so charming of you to say that you were disposed to be friends with me! You modern young ladies are splendid: perfectly splendid!
Vivie Dubiously. Eh? Watching him with dawning disappointment as to the quality of his brains and character.
Praed When I was your age, young men and women were afraid of each other: there was no good fellowship. Nothing real. Only gallantry copied out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly reserve! gentlemanly chivalry! always saying no when you meant yes! simple purgatory for shy and sincere souls.
Vivie Yes, I imagine there must have been a frightful waste of time. Especially women’s time.
Praed Oh, waste of life, waste of everything. But things are improving. Do you know, I have been in a positive state of excitement about meeting you ever since your magnificent achievements at Cambridge: a thing unheard of in my day. It was perfectly splendid, your tieing with the third wrangler. Just the right place, you know. The first wrangler is always a dreamy, morbid fellow, in whom the thing is pushed to the length of a disease.
Vivie It doesn’t pay. I wouldn’t do it again for the same money.
Praed Aghast. The same money!
Vivie I did it for fifty pounds. Perhaps you don’t know how it was. Mrs. Latham, my tutor at Newnham, told my mother that I could distinguish myself in the mathematical tripos if I went in for it in earnest. The papers were full just then of Phillipa Summers beating the senior wrangler⁠—you remember about it; and nothing would please my mother but that I should do the same thing. I said flatly that it was not worth my while to face the grind since I was not going in for teaching; but I offered to try for fourth wrangler or thereabouts for fifty pounds. She closed with me at that, after a little grumbling; and I was better than my bargain. But I wouldn’t do it again for that. Two hundred pounds would have been nearer the mark.
Praed Much damped. Lord bless me! That’s a very practical way of looking at it.
Vivie Did you expect to find me an unpractical person?
Praed No, no. But surely it’s practical to consider not only the work these honors cost, but also the culture they bring.
Vivie Culture! My dear Mr. Praed: do you know what the mathematical tripos means? It means grind, grind, grind for six to eight hours a day at mathematics, and nothing but mathematics. I’m supposed to know something about science; but I know nothing except the mathematics it involves. I can make calculations for engineers, electricians, insurance companies, and so on; but I know next to nothing about engineering or electricity or insurance. I don’t even know arithmetic well. Outside mathematics, lawn-tennis, eating, sleeping, cycling, and walking, I’m a more ignorant barbarian than any woman could possibly be who hadn’t gone in for the tripos.
Praed Revolted. What a monstrous, wicked, rascally system! I knew it! I felt at once that it meant destroying all that makes womanhood beautiful!
Vivie I don’t object to it on that score in the least. I shall turn it to very good account, I assure you.
Praed Pooh! In what way?
Vivie I shall set up chambers in the city and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing. Under cover of that I shall do some law, with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time. I’ve come down here by myself to read law⁠—not for a holiday, as my mother imagines. I hate holidays.
Praed You make my blood run cold. Are you to have no romance, no beauty in your life?
Vivie I don’t care for either, I assure you.
Praed You can’t mean that.
Vivie Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I’m tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it.
Praed Rising in a frenzy of repudiation. I don’t believe it. I am an artist; and I can’t believe it: I refuse to believe it. It’s only that you haven’t discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.
Vivie Yes, I have. Last May I spent six weeks in London with Honoria Fraser. Mamma thought we were doing a round of sightseeing together; but I was really at Honoria’s chambers in Chancery Lane every day, working away at actuarial calculations for her, and helping her as well as a greenhorn could. In the evenings we smoked and talked, and never dreamt of going out except for exercise. And I never enjoyed myself more in my life. I cleared all my expenses and got initiated into the business without a fee in the bargain.
Praed But bless my heart and soul, Miss Warren, do you call that discovering art?
Vivie Wait a bit. That wasn’t the beginning. I went up to town on an invitation from some artistic people in Fitzjohn’s Avenue; one of the girls was a Newnham chum. They took me to the National Gallery, to the Opera, and to a concert where the band played all the evening⁠—Beethoven and Wagner and so on. I wouldn’t go through that experience again for anything you could offer me. I held out for civility’s sake until the third day; and then I said, plump out, that I couldn’t stand any more of it, and went off to Chancery Lane. Now you know the sort of perfectly splendid modern young lady I am. How do you think I shall get on with my mother?
Praed Startled. Well, I hope⁠—er⁠—
Vivie It’s not so much what you hope as what you believe, that I want to know.
Praed Well, frankly, I am afraid your mother will be a little disappointed. Not from any shortcoming on your part, you know: I don’t mean that. But you are so different from her ideal.
Vivie What is her ideal like?
Praed Well, you must have observed, Miss Warren, that people who are dissatisfied with their own bringing-up generally think that the world would be all right if everybody were to be brought up quite differently. Now your mother’s life has been⁠—er⁠—I suppose you know⁠—
Vivie I know nothing. Praed is appalled. His consternation grows as she continues. That’s exactly my difficulty. You forget, Mr. Praed, that I hardly know my mother. Since I was a child I have lived in England, at school or at college, or with people paid to take charge of me. I have been boarded out all my life; and my mother has lived in Brussels or Vienna and never let me go to her. I only see her when she visits England for a few days. I don’t complain: it’s been very pleasant; for people have been very good to me; and there has always been plenty of money to make things smooth. But don’t imagine I know anything about my mother. I know far less than you do.
Praed Very ill at ease. In that case⁠—He stops, quite at a loss. Then, with a forced attempt at gaiety: But what nonsense we are talking! Of course you and your mother will get on capitally. He rises, and looks abroad at the view. What a charming little place you have here!
Vivie Unmoved. If you think you are doing anything but confirming my worst suspicions by changing the subject like that, you must take me for a much greater fool than I hope I am.
Praed Your worst suspicions! Oh, pray don’t say that. Now don’t.
Vivie Why won’t my mother’s life bear being talked about?
Praed Pray think, Miss Vivie. It is natural that I should have a certain delicacy in talking to my old friend’s daughter about her behind her back. You will have plenty of opportunity of talking about it when she comes. Anxiously. I wonder what is keeping her.
Vivie No: she won’t talk about it either. Rising. However, I won’t press you. Only, mind this, Mr. Praed, I expect there will be a battle royal when my mother hears of my Chancery Lane project.
Praed Ruefully. I’m afraid there will.
Vivie I shall win the battle, because I want nothing but my fare to London to start there tomorrow earning my own living by devilling for Honoria. Besides, I have no mysteries to keep up; and it seems she has. I shall use that advantage over her if necessary.
Praed Greatly shocked. Oh, no. No, pray. You’d not do such a thing.
Vivie Then tell me why not.
Praed I really cannot. I appeal to your good feeling. She smiles at his sentimentality. Besides, you may be too bold. Your mother is not to be trifled with when she’s angry.
Vivie You can’t frighten me, Mr. Praed. In that month at Chancery Lane I had opportunities of taking the measure of one or two women very like my mother. You may back me to win. But if I hit harder in my ignorance than I need, remember it is you who refuse to enlighten me. Now, let us drop the subject. She takes her chair and replaces it near the hammock with the same vigorous swing as before.
Praed Taking a desperate resolution. One word, Miss Warren. I had better tell you. It’s very difficult; but⁠—
Mrs. Warren* and Sir George Crofts arrive at the gate. Mrs. Warren* is between forty and fifty, formerly pretty, showily dressed in a brilliant hat and a gay blouse fitting tightly over her bust and flanked by fashionable sleeves. Rather spoilt and domineering, and decidedly vulgar, but, on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman.
Crofts is a tall powerfully-built man of about fifty, fashionably dressed in the style of a young man. Nasal voice, reedier than might be expected from his strong frame. Clean-shaven bulldog jaws, large flat ears, and thick neck: gentlemanly combination of the most brutal types of city man, sporting man, and man about town.
Vivie Here they are. Coming to them as they enter the garden. How do, mater? Mr. Praed’s been here this half hour, waiting for you.
Mrs. Warren Well, if you’ve been waiting, Praddy, it’s your own fault: I thought you’d have had the gumption to know I was coming by the 3:10 train. Vivie: put your hat on, dear: you’ll get sunburnt. Oh, I forgot to introduce you. Sir George Crofts: my little Vivie.
Crofts* advances to Vivie* with his most courtly manner. She nods, but makes no motion to shake hands.
Crofts May I shake hands with a young lady whom I have known by reputation very long as the daughter of one of my oldest friends?
Vivie Who has been looking him up and down sharply. If you like. She takes his tenderly proferred hand and gives it a squeeze that makes him open his eyes; then turns away, and says to her mother: Will you come in, or shall I get a couple more chairs? She goes into the porch for the chairs.
Mrs. Warren Well, George, what do you think of her?
Crofts Ruefully. She has a powerful fist. Did you shake hands with her, Praed?
Praed Yes: it will pass off presently.
Crofts I hope so. Vivie reappears with two more chairs. He hurries to her assistance. Allow me.
Mrs. Warren Patronizingly. Let Sir George help you with the chairs, dear.
Vivie Almost pitching two into his arms. Here you are. She dusts her hands and turns to Mrs. Warren. You’d like some tea, wouldn’t you?
Mrs. Warren Sitting in Praed’s chair and fanning herself. I’m dying for a drop to drink.