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.

OCTAVIUS. 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 mischievous.

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-DEMOCRAT. 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].