Masters of the Theatre

by Delphi Classics

  This particular garden is on a hill opposite the Alhambra; and the villa is as expensive and pretentious as a villa must be if it is to be let furnished by the week to opulent American and English visitors. If we stand on the lawn at the foot of the garden and look uphill, our horizon is the stone balustrade of a flagged platform on the edge of infinite space at the top of the hill. Between us and this platform is a flower garden with a circular basin and fountain in the centre, surrounded by geometrical flower beds, gravel paths, and clipped yew trees in the genteelest order. The garden is higher than our lawn; so we reach it by a few steps in the middle of its embankment. The platform is higher again than the garden, from which we mount a couple more steps to look over the balustrade at a fine view of the town up the valley and of the hills that stretch away beyond it to where, in the remotest distance, they become mountains. On our left is the villa, accessible by steps from the left hand corner of the garden. Returning from the platform through the garden and down again to the lawn (a movement which leaves the villa behind us on our right) we find evidence of literary interests on the part of the tenants in the fact that there is no tennis net nor set of croquet hoops, but, on our left, a little iron garden table with books on it, mostly yellow-backed, and a chair beside it. A chair on the right has also a couple of open books upon it. There are no newspapers, a circumstance which, with the absence of games, might lead an intelligent spectator to the most far reaching conclusions as to the sort of people who live in the villa. Such speculations are checked, however, on this delightfully fine afternoon, by the appearance at a little gate in a paling an our left, of Henry Straker in his professional costume. He opens the gate for an elderly gentleman, and follows him on to the lawn.

  This elderly gentleman defies the Spanish sun in a black frock coat, tall silk bat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark grey and lilac blend into a highly respectable color, and a black necktie tied into a bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a man whose social position needs constant and scrupulous affirmation without regard to climate: one who would dress thus for the middle of the Sahara or the top of Mont Blanc. And since he has not the stamp of the class which accepts as its life-mission the advertizing and maintenance of first rate tailoring and millinery, he looks vulgar in his finery, though in a working dress of any kind he would look dignified enough. He is a bullet cheeked man with a red complexion, stubbly hair, smallish eyes, a hard mouth that folds down at the corners, and a dogged chin. The looseness of skin that comes with age has attacked his throat and the laps of his cheeks; but he is still hard as an apple above the mouth; so that the upper half of his face looks younger than the lower. He has the self-confidence of one who has made money, and something of the truculence of one who has made it in a brutalizing struggle, his civility having under it a perceptible menace that he has other methods in reserve if necessary. Withal, a man to be rather pitied when he is not to be feared; for there is something pathetic about him at times, as if the huge commercial machine which has worked him into his frock coat had allowed him very little of his own way and left his affections hungry and baffled. At the first word that falls from him it is clear that he is an Irishman whose native intonation has clung to him through many changes of place and rank. One can only guess that the original material of his speech was perhaps the surly Kerry brogue; but the degradation of speech that occurs in London, Glasgow, Dublin and big cities generally has been at work on it so long that nobody but an arrant cockney would dream of calling it a brogue now; for its music is almost gone, though its surliness is still perceptible. Straker, as a very obvious cockney, inspires him with implacable contempt, as a stupid Englishman who cannot even speak his own language properly. Straker, on the other hand, regards the old gentleman’s accent as a joke thoughtfully provided by Providence expressly for the amusement of the British race, and treats him normally with the indulgence due to an inferior and unlucky species, but occasionally with indignant alarm when the old gentleman shows signs of intending his Irish nonsense to be taken seriously.

  STRAKER. I’ll go tell the young lady. She said you’d prefer to stay here [he turns to go up through the garden to the villa].

  MALONE. [who has been looking round him with lively curiosity] The young lady? That’s Miss Violet, eh?

  STRAKER. [stopping on the steps with sudden suspicion] Well, you know, don’t you?

  MALONE. Do I?

  STRAKER. [his temper rising] Well, do you or don’t you?

  MALONE. What business is that of yours?

  Straker, now highly indignant, comes back from the steps and confronts the visitor.

  STRAKER. I’ll tell you what business it is of mine. Miss Robinson —

  MALONE. [interrupting] Oh, her name is Robinson, is it? Thank you.

  STRAKER. Why, you don’t know even her name?

  MALONE. Yes I do, now that you’ve told me.

  STRAKER. [after a moment of stupefaction at the old man’s readiness in repartee] Look here: what do you mean by gittin into my car and lettin me bring you here if you’re not the person I took that note to?

  MALONE. Who else did you take it to, pray?

  STRAKER. I took it to Mr Ector Malone, at Miss Robinson’s request, see? Miss Robinson is not my principal: I took it to oblige her. I know Mr Malone; and he ain’t you, not by a long chalk. At the hotel they told me that your name is Ector Malone.

  MALONE. Hector Malone.

  STRAKER. [with calm superiority] Hector in your own country: that’s what comes o livin in provincial places like Ireland and America. Over here you’re Ector: if you avn’t noticed it before you soon will.

  The growing strain of the conversation is here relieved by Violet, who has sallied from the villa and through the garden to the steps, which she now descends, coming very opportunely between Malone and Straker.

  VIOLET. [to Straker] Did you take my message?

  STRAKER. Yes, miss. I took it to the hotel and sent it up, expecting to see young Mr Malone. Then out walks this gent, and says it’s all right and he’ll come with me. So as the hotel people said he was Mr Ector Malone, I fetched him. And now he goes back on what he said. But if he isn’t the gentleman you meant, say the word: it’s easy enough to fetch him back again.

  MALONE. I should esteem it a great favor if I might have a short conversation with you, madam. I am Hector’s father, as this bright Britisher would have guessed in the course of another hour or so.

  STRAKER. [coolly defiant] No, not in another year or so. When we’ve ad you as long to polish up as we’ve ad im, perhaps you’ll begin to look a little bit up to is mark. At present you fall a long way short. You’ve got too many aitches, for one thing. [To Violet, amiably] All right, Miss: you want to talk to him: I shan’t intrude. [He nods affably to Malone and goes out through the little gate in the paling].

  VIOLET. [very civilly] I am so sorry, Mr Malone, if that man has been rude to you. But what can we do? He is our chauffeur.

  MALONE. Your what?

  VIOLET. The driver of our automobile. He can drive a motor car at seventy miles an hour, and mend it when it breaks down. We are dependent on our motor cars; and our motor cars are dependent on him; so of course we are dependent on him.

  MALONE. I’ve noticed, madam, that every thousand dollars an Englishman gets seems to add one to the number of people he’s dependent on. However, you needn’t apologize for your man: I made him talk on purpose. By doing so I learnt that you’re staying here in Grannida with a party of English, including my son Hector.

  VIOLET. [conversationally] Yes. We intended to go to Nice; but we had to follow a rather eccentric member of our party who started first and came here. Won’t you sit down? [She clears the nearest chair of the two books on it].

  MALONE. [impressed by this attention] Thank you. [He sits down, examining her curiously as she goes to the iron table to put down the books. When she turns to him again, he says] Miss Robinson, I believe?

  VIOLET. [sitting down] Yes.

 
; MALONE. [Taking a letter from his pocket] Your note to Hector runs as follows [Violet is unable to repress a start. He pauses quietly to take out and put on his spectacles, which have gold rims]: “Dearest: they have all gone to the Alhambra for the afternoon. I have shammed headache and have the garden all to myself. Jump into Jack’s motor: Straker will rattle you here in a jiffy. Quick, quick, quick. Your loving Violet.” [He looks at her; but by this time she has recovered herself, and meets his spectacles with perfect composure. He continues slowly] Now I don’t know on what terms young people associate in English society; but in America that note would be considered to imply a very considerable degree of affectionate intimacy between the parties.

  VIOLET. Yes: I know your son very well, Mr Malone. Have you any objection?

  MALONE. [somewhat taken aback] No, no objection exactly. Provided it is understood that my son is altogether dependent on me, and that I have to be consulted in any important step he may propose to take.

  VIOLET. I am sure you would not be unreasonable with him, Mr Malone.

  MALONE. I hope not, Miss Robinson; but at your age you might think many things unreasonable that don’t seem so to me.

  VIOLET. [with a little shrug] Oh well, I suppose there’s no use our playing at cross purposes, Mr Malone. Hector wants to marry me.

  MALONE. I inferred from your note that he might. Well, Miss Robinson, he is his own master; but if he marries you he shall not have a rap from me. [He takes off his spectacles and pockets them with the note].

  VIOLET. [with some severity] That is not very complimentary to me, Mr Malone.

  MALONE. I say nothing against you, Miss Robinson: I daresay you are an amiable and excellent young lady. But I have other views for Hector.

  VIOLET. Hector may not have other views for himself, Mr Malone.

  MALONE. Possibly not. Then he does without me: that’s all. I daresay you are prepared for that. When a young lady writes to a young man to come to her quick, quick, quick, money seems nothing and love seems everything.

  VIOLET. [sharply] I beg your pardon, Mr Malone: I do not think anything so foolish. Hector must have money.

  MALONE. [staggered] Oh, very well, very well. No doubt he can work for it.

  VIOLET. What is the use of having money if you have to work for it? [She rises impatiently]. It’s all nonsense, Mr Malone: you must enable your son to keep up his position. It is his right.

  MALONE. [grimly] I should not advise you to marry him on the strength of that right, Miss Robinson.

  Violet, who has almost lost her temper, controls herself with an effort; unclenches her fingers; and resumes her seat with studied tranquillity and reasonableness.

  VIOLET. What objection have you to me, pray? My social position is as good as Hector’s, to say the least. He admits it.

  MALONE. [shrewdly] You tell him so from time to time, eh? Hector’s social position in England, Miss Robinson, is just what I choose to buy for him. I have made him a fair offer. Let him pick out the most historic house, castle or abbey that England contains. The day that he tells me he wants it for a wife worthy of its traditions, I buy it for him, and give him the means of keeping it up.

  VIOLET. What do you mean by a wife worthy of its traditions? Cannot any well bred woman keep such a house for him?

  MALONE. No: she must be born to it.

  VIOLET. Hector was not born to it, was he?

  MALONE. His granmother was a barefooted Irish girl that nursed me by a turf fire. Let him marry another such, and I will not stint her marriage portion. Let him raise himself socially with my money or raise somebody else so long as there is a social profit somewhere, I’ll regard my expenditure as justified. But there must be a profit for someone. A marriage with you would leave things just where they are.

  VIOLET. Many of my relations would object very much to my marrying the grandson of a common woman, Mr Malone. That may be prejudice; but so is your desire to have him marry a title prejudice.

  MALONE. [rising, and approaching her with a scrutiny in which there is a good deal of reluctant respect] You seem a pretty straightforward downright sort of a young woman.

  VIOLET. I do not see why I should be made miserably poor because I cannot make profits for you. Why do you want to make Hector unhappy?

  MALONE. He will get over it all right enough. Men thrive better on disappointments in love than on disappointments in money. I daresay you think that sordid; but I know what I’m talking about. My father died of starvation in Ireland in the black 47, Maybe you’ve heard of it.

  VIOLET. The Famine?

  MALONE. [with smouldering passion] No, the starvation. When a country is full of food, and exporting it, there can be no famine. My father was starved dead; and I was starved out to America in my mother’s arms. English rule drove me and mine out of Ireland. Well, you can keep Ireland. I and my like are coming back to buy England; and we’ll buy the best of it. I want no middle class properties and no middle class women for Hector. That’s straightforward isn’t it, like yourself?

  VIOLET. [icily pitying his sentimentality] Really, Mr Malone, I am astonished to hear a man of your age and good sense talking in that romantic way. Do you suppose English noblemen will sell their places to you for the asking?

  MALONE. I have the refusal of two of the oldest family mansions in England. One historic owner can’t afford to keep all the rooms dusted: the other can’t afford the death duties. What do you say now?

  VIOLET. Of course it is very scandalous; but surely you know that the Government will sooner or later put a stop to all these Socialistic attacks on property.

  MALONE. [grinning] D’y’ think they’ll be able to get that done before I buy the house — or rather the abbey? They’re both abbeys.

  VIOLET. [putting that aside rather impatiently] Oh, well, let us talk sense, Mr Malone. You must feel that we haven’t been talking sense so far.

  MALONE. I can’t say I do. I mean all I say.

  VIOLET. Then you don’t know Hector as I do. He is romantic and faddy — he gets it from you, I fancy — and he wants a certain sort of wife to take care of him. Not a faddy sort of person, you know.

  MALONE. Somebody like you, perhaps?

  VIOLET. [quietly] Well, yes. But you cannot very well ask me to undertake this with absolutely no means of keeping up his position.

  MALONE. [alarmed] Stop a bit, stop a bit. Where are we getting to? I’m not aware that I’m asking you to undertake anything.

  VIOLET. Of course, Mr Malone, you can make it very difficult for me to speak to you if you choose to misunderstand me.

  MALONE. [half bewildered] I don’t wish to take any unfair advantage; but we seem to have got off the straight track somehow.

  Straker, with the air of a man who has been making haste, opens the little gate, and admits Hector, who, snorting with indignation, comes upon the lawn, and is making for his father when Violet, greatly dismayed, springs up and intercepts him. Straker doer not wait; at least he does not remain visibly within earshot.

  VIOLET. Oh, how unlucky! Now please, Hector, say nothing. Go away until I have finished speaking to your father.

  HECTOR. [inexorably] No, Violet: I mean to have this thing out, right away. [He puts her aside; passes her by; and faces his father, whose cheeks darken as his Irish blood begins to simmer]. Dad: you’ve not played this hand straight.

  MALONE. Hwat d’y’mean?

  HECTOR. You’ve opened a letter addressed to me. You’ve impersonated me and stolen a march on this lady. That’s dishonorable.

  MALONE. [threateningly] Now you take care what you’re saying, Hector. Take care, I tell you.

  HECTOR. I have taken care. I am taking care. I’m taking care of my honor and my position in English society.

  MALONE. [hotly] Your position has been got by my money: do you know that?

  HECTOR. Well, you’ve just spoiled it all by opening that letter. A letter from an English lady, not addressed to you — a confidential letter! a delicate letter! a private letter
opened by my father! That’s a sort of thing a man can’t struggle against in England. The sooner we go back together the better. [He appeals mutely to the heavens to witness the shame and anguish of two outcasts].

  VIOLET. [snubbing him with an instinctive dislike for scene making] Don’t be unreasonable, Hector. It was quite natural of Mr Malone to open my letter: his name was on the envelope.

  MALONE. There! You’ve no common sense, Hector. I thank you, Miss Robinson.

  HECTOR. I thank you, too. It’s very kind of you. My father knows no better.

  MALONE. [furiously clenching his fists] Hector —

  HECTOR. [with undaunted moral force] Oh, it’s no use hectoring me. A private letter’s a private letter, dad: you can’t get over that.

  MALONE [raising his voice] I won’t be talked back to by you, d’y’ hear?

  VIOLET. Ssh! please, please. Here they all come.

  Father and son, checked, glare mutely at one another as Tanner comes in through the little gate with Ramsden, followed by Octavius and Ann.

  VIOLET. Back already!

  TANNER. The Alhambra is not open this afternoon.

  VIOLET. What a sell!

  Tanner passes on, and presently finds himself between Hector and a strange elder, both apparently on the verge of personal combat. He looks from one to the other for an explanation. They sulkily avoid his eye, and nurse their wrath in silence.

  RAMSDEN. Is it wise for you to be out in the sunshine with such a headache, Violet?

  TANNER. Have you recovered too, Malone?

  VIOLET. Oh, I forgot. We have not all met before. Mr Malone: won’t you introduce your father?

  HECTOR. [with Roman firmness] No, I will not. He is no father of mine.

  MALONE. [very angry] You disown your dad before your English friends, do you?

  VIOLET. Oh please don’t make a scene.

  Ann and Octavius, lingering near the gate, exchange an astonished glance, and discreetly withdraw up the steps to the garden, where they can enjoy the disturbance without intruding. On their way to the steps Ann sends a little grimace of mute sympathy to Violet, who is standing with her back to the little table, looking on in helpless annoyance as her husband soars to higher and higher moral eminences without the least regard to the old man’s millions.