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.
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