The Greatest of These is Self-Control


As there is no place in Darwinism for free will, or any other sort
of will, the Neo-Darwinists held that there is no such thing as
self-control. Yet self-control is just the one quality of survival value
which Circumstantial Selection must invariably and inevitably develop in
the long run. Uncontrolled qualities may be selected for survival and
development for certain periods and under certain circumstances. For
instance, since it is the ungovernable gluttons who strive the hardest
to get food and drink, their efforts would develop their strength and
cunning in a period of such scarcity that the utmost they could do would
not enable them to over-eat themselves. But a change of circumstances
involving a plentiful supply of food would destroy them. We see this
very thing happening often enough in the case of the healthy and
vigorous poor man who becomes a millionaire by one of the accidents of
our competitive commerce, and immediately proceeds to dig his grave with
his teeth. But the self-controlled man survives all such changes of
circumstance, because he adapts himself to them, and eats neither as
much as he can hold nor as little as he can scrape along on, but as much
as is good for him. What is self-control? It is nothing but a highly
developed vital sense, dominating and regulating the mere appetites. To
overlook the very existence of this supreme sense; to miss the obvious
inference that it is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to
survive; to omit, in short, the highest moral claim of Evolutionary
Selection: all this, which the Neo-Darwinians did in the name of Natural
Selection, shewed the most pitiable want of mastery of their own
subject, the dullest lack of observation of the forces upon which
Natural Selection works.

A Sample of Lamarcko-Shavian Invective


The Vitalist philosophers made no such mistakes. Nietzsche, for example,
thinking out the great central truth of the Will to Power instead of
cutting off mouse-tails, had no difficulty in concluding that the final
objective of this Will was power over self, and that the seekers after
power over others and material possessions were on a false scent.

The stultification naturally became much worse as the first Darwinians
died out. The prestige of these pioneers, who had the older evolutionary
culture to build on, and were in fact no more Darwinian in the modern
sense than Darwin himself, ceased to dazzle us when Huxley and Tyndall
and Spencer and Darwin passed away, and we were left with the smaller
people who began with Darwin and took in nothing else. Accordingly, I
find that in the year 1906 I indulged my temper by hurling invectives at
the Neo-Darwinians in the following terms.

'I really do not wish to be abusive; but when I think of these poor
little dullards, with their precarious hold of just that corner of
evolution that a blackbeetle can understand--with their retinue of
twopenny-halfpenny Torquemadas wallowing in the infamies of the
vivisector's laboratory, and solemnly offering us as epoch-making
discoveries their demonstrations that dogs get weaker and die if you
give them no food; that intense pain makes mice sweat; and that if you
cut off a dog's leg the three-legged dog will have a four-legged puppy,
I ask myself what spell has fallen on intelligent and humane men
that they allow themselves to be imposed on by this rabble of dolts,
blackguards, impostors, quacks, liars, and, worst of all, credulous
conscientious fools. Better a thousand times Moses and Spurgeon [a then
famous preacher] back again. After all, you cannot understand Moses
without imagination nor Spurgeon without metaphysics; but you can be a
thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics,
poetry, conscience, or decency. For "Natural Selection" has no moral
significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose,
no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental
selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is
more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole
universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals
could bear to live.'

The Humanitarians and the Problem of Evil


Yet the humanitarians were as delighted as anybody with Darwinism at
first. They had been perplexed by the Problem of Evil and the Cruelty of
Nature. They were Shelleyists, but not atheists. Those who believed in
God were at a terrible disadvantage with the atheist. They could not
deny the existence of natural facts so cruel that to attribute them to
the will of God is to make God a demon. Belief in God was impossible to
any thoughtful person without belief in the Devil as well. The painted
Devil, with his horns, his barbed tail, and his abode of burning
brimstone, was an incredible bogey; but the evil attributed to him was
real enough; and the atheists argued that the author of evil, if he
exists, must be strong enough to overcome God, else God is morally
responsible for everything he permits the Devil to do. Neither
conclusion delivered us from the horror of attributing the cruelty of
nature to the workings of an evil will, or could reconcile it with our
impulses towards justice, mercy, and a higher life.

A complete deliverance was offered by the discovery of Circumstantial
Selection: that is to say, of a method by which horrors having every
appearance of being elaborately planned by some intelligent contriver
are only accidents without any moral significance at all. Suppose a
watcher from the stars saw a frightful accident produced by two crowded
trains at full speed crashing into one another! How could he conceive
that a catastrophe brought about by such elaborate machinery, such
ingenious preparation, such skilled direction, such vigilant industry,
was quite unintentional? Would he not conclude that the signal-men were
devils?

Well, Circumstantial Selection is largely a theory of collisions: that
is, a theory of the innocence of much apparently designed devilry. In
this way Darwin brought intense relief as well as an enlarged knowledge
of facts to the humanitarians. He destroyed the omnipotence of God for
them; but he also exonerated God from a hideous charge of cruelty.
Granted that the comfort was shallow, and that deeper reflection was
bound to shew that worse than all conceivable devil-deities is a blind,
deaf, dumb, heartless, senseless mob of forces that strike as a tree
does when it is blown down by the wind, or as the tree itself is struck
by lightning. That did not occur to the humanitarians at the moment:
people do not reflect deeply when they are in the first happiness of
escape from an intolerably oppressive situation. Like Bunyan's pilgrim
they could not see the wicket gate, nor the Slough of Despond, nor the
castle of Giant Despair; but they saw the shining light at the end of
the path, and so started gaily towards it as Evolutionists.

And they were right; for the problem of evil yields very easily to
Creative Evolution. If the driving power behind Evolution is omnipotent
only in the sense that there seems no limit to its final achievement;
and if it must meanwhile struggle with matter and circumstance by
the method of trial and error, then the world must be full of its
unsuccessful experiments. Christ may meet a tiger, or a High Priest
arm-in-arm with a Roman Governor, and be the unfittest to survive under
the circumstances. Mozart may have a genius that prevails against
Emperors and Archbishops, and a lung that succumbs to some obscure and
noxious property of foul air. If all our calamities are either accidents
or sincerely repented mistakes, there is no malice in the Cruelty
of Nature and no Problem of Evil in the Victorian sense at all. The
theology of the women who told us that they became atheists when they
sat by the cradles of their children and saw them strangled by the hand
of God is succeeded by the theology of Blanco Posnet, with his 'It was
early days when He made the croup, I guess. It was the best He could
think of then; but when it turned out wrong on His hands He made you and
me to fight the croup for Him.'

How One Touch of Darwin Makes the Whole World Kin


Another humanitarian interest in Darwinism was that Darwin popularized
Evolution generally, as well as making his own special contribution to
it. Now the general conception of Evolution provides the humanitarian
with a scientific basis, because it establishes the fundamental equality
of all living things. It makes the killing of an animal murder in
exactly the same sense as the killing of a man is murder. It is
sometimes necessary to kill men as it is always necessary to kill
tigers; but the old theoretic distinction between the two acts has been
obliterated by Evolution. When I was a child and was told that our dog
and our parrot, with whom I was on intimate terms, were not creatures
like myself, but were brutal whilst I was reasonable, I not only did not
believe it, but quite consciously and intellectually formed the opinion
that the distinction was false; so that afterwards, when Darwin's views
were first unfolded to me, I promptly said that I had found out all that
for myself before I was ten years old; and I am far from sure that my
youthful arrogance was not justified; for this sense of the kinship of
all forms of life is all that is needed to make Evolution not only a
conceivable theory, but an inspiring one. St Anthony was ripe for the
Evolution theory when he preached to the fishes, and St Francis when
he called the birds his little brothers. Our vanity, and our snobbish
conception of Godhead as being, like earthly kingship, a supreme class
distinction instead of the rock on which Equality is built, had led us
to insist on God offering us special terms by placing us apart from and
above all the rest of his creatures. Evolution took that conceit out of
us; and now, though we may kill a flea without the smallest remorse, we
at all events know that we are killing our cousin. No doubt it shocks
the flea when the creature that an almighty Celestial Flea created
expressly for the food of fleas, destroys the jumping lord of creation
with his sharp and enormous thumbnail; but no flea will ever be so
foolish as to preach that in slaying fleas Man is applying a method of
Natural Selection which will finally evolve a flea so swift that no man
can catch him, and so hardy of constitution that Insect Powder will have
no more effect on him than strychnine on an elephant.

Act I
   
 
Roebuck Ramsden is in his study, opening the morning’s letters. The study, handsomely and solidly furnished, proclaims the man of means. Not a speck of dust is visible: it is clear that there are at least two housemaids and a parlormaid downstairs, and a housekeeper upstairs who does not let them spare elbow-grease. Even the top of Roebuck’s head is polished: on a sunshiny day he could heliograph his orders to distant camps by merely nodding. In no other respect, however, does he suggest the military man. It is in active civil life that men get his broad air of importance, his dignified expectation of deference, his determinate mouth disarmed and refined since the hour of his success by the withdrawal of opposition and the concession of comfort and precedence and power. He is more than a highly respectable man: he is marked out as a president of highly respectable men, a chairman among directors, an alderman among councillors, a mayor among aldermen. Four tufts of iron-grey hair, which will soon be as white as isinglass, and are in other respects not at all unlike it, grow in two symmetrical pairs above his ears and at the angles of his spreading jaws. He wears a black frock coat, a white waistcoat (it is bright spring weather), and trousers, neither black nor perceptibly blue, of one of those indefinitely mixed hues which the modern clothier has produced to harmonize with the religions of respectable men. He has not been out of doors yet to-day; so he still wears his slippers, his boots being ready for him on the hearthrug. Surmising that he has no valet, and seeing that he has no secretary with a shorthand notebook and a typewriter, one meditates on how little our great burgess domesticity has been disturbed by new fashions and methods, or by the enterprise of the railway and hotel companies which sell you a Saturday to Monday of life at Folkestone as a real gentleman for two guineas, first class fares both ways included.
      1
   
  How old is Roebuck? The question is important on the threshold of a drama of ideas; for under such circumstances everything depends on whether his adolescence belonged to the sixties or to the eighties. He was born, as a matter of fact, in 1839, and was a Unitarian and Free Trader from his boyhood, and an Evolutionist from the publication of the Origin of Species. Consequently he has always classed himself as an advanced thinker and fearlessly outspoken reformer.
      2
   
  Sitting at his writing table, he has on his right the windows giving on Portland Place. Through these, as through a proscenium, the curious spectator may contemplate his profile as well as the blinds will permit. On his left is the inner wall, with a stately bookcase, and the door not quite in the middle, but somewhat further from him. Against the wall opposite him are two busts on pillars: one, to his left, of John Bright; the other, to his right, of Mr Herbert Spencer. Between them hang an engraved portrait of Richard Cobden; enlarged photographs of Martineau, Huxley, and George Eliot; autotypes of allegories by Mr G. F. Watts (for Roebuck believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them), and an impression of Dupont’s engraving of Delaroche’s Beaux Arts hemicycle, representing the great men of all ages. On the wall behind him, above the mantel-shelf, is a family Portrait of impenetrable obscurity.
      3
   
  A chair stands near the writing table for the convenience of business visitors. Two other chairs are against the wall between the busts.
      4
   
  A parlormaid enters with a visitor’s card. Roebuck takes it, and nods, pleased. Evidently a welcome caller.
      5
   
  RAMSDEN. Shew him in.
  The parlormaid goes out and returns with the visitor.
      6
   
  THE MAID. Mr Robinson.
  Mr Robinson is really an uncommonly nice looking young fellow. He must, one thinks, be the jeune premier; for it is not in reason to suppose that a second such attractive male figure should appear in one story. The slim, shapely frame, the elegant suit of new mourning, the small head and regular features, the pretty little moustache, the frank clear eyes, the wholesome bloom on the youthful complexion, the well brushed glossy hair, not curly, but of fine texture and good dark color, the arch of good nature in the eyebrows, the erect forehead and neatly pointed chin, all announce the man who will love and suffer later on. And that he will not do so without sympathy is guaranteed by an engaging sincerity and eager modest serviceableness which stamp him as a man of amiable nature. The moment he appears, Ramsden’s face expands into fatherly liking and welcome, an expression which drops into one of decorous grief as the young man approaches him with sorrow in his face as well as in his black clothes. Ramsden seems to know the nature of the bereavement. As the visitor advances silently to the writing table, the old man rises and shakes his hand across it without a word: a long, affectionate shake which tells the story of a recent sorrow common to both.
      7
   
  RAMSDEN [concluding the handshake and cheering up] Well, well, Octavius, it’s the common lot. We must all face it some day. Sit down.
  Octavius takes the visitor’s chair. Ramsden replaces himself in his own.
      8
   
  OCTAVIUS. Yes: we must face it, Mr Ramsden. But I owed him a great deal. He did everything for me that my father could have done if he had lived.
      9
   
  RAMSDEN. He had no son of his own, you see.
     10
   
  OCTAVIUS. But he had daughters; and yet he was as good to my sister as to me. And his death was so sudden! I always intended to thank him—to let him know that I had not taken all his care of me as a matter of course, as any boy takes his father’s care. But I waited for an opportunity; and now he is dead—dropped without a moment’s warning. He will never know what I felt. [He takes out his handkerchief and cries unaffectedly].
     11
   
  RAMSDEN. How do we know that, Octavius? He may know it: we cannot tell. Come! dont grieve. [Octavius masters himself and puts up his handkerchief]. Thats right. Now let me tell you something to console you. The last time I saw him—it was in this very room—he said to me: “Tavy is a generous lad and the soul of honor; and when I see how little consideration other men get from their sons, I realize how much better than a son he’s been to me.” There! Doesnt that do you good?
     12
   
  OCTAVIUS. Mr Ramsden: he used to say to me that he had met only one man in the world who was the soul of honor, and that was Roebuck
     13
   
  RAMSDEN. Oh, that was his partiality: we were very old friends, you know. But there was something else he used to say about you. I wonder whether I ought to tell you or not!
     14
   
  OCTAVIUS. You know best.
     15
   
  RAMSDEN. It was something about his daughter.
     16
   
  OCTAVIUS [eagerly] About Ann! Oh, do tell me that, Mr Ramsden.
     17
   
  RAMSDEN. Well, he said he was glad, after all, you were not his son, because he thought that someday Annie and you—[Octavius blushes vividly]. Well, perhaps I shouldnt have told you. But he was in earnest.
     18
   
  OCTAVIUS. Oh, if only I thought I had a chance! You know, Mr Ramsden, I dont care about money or about what people call position; and I cant bring myself to take an interest in the business of struggling for them. Well, Ann has a most exquisite nature; but she is so accustomed to be in the thick of that sort of thing that she thinks a man’s character incomplete if he is not ambitious. She knows that if she married me she would have to reason herself out of being ashamed of me for not being a big success of some kind.
     19
   
  RAMSDEN [getting up and planting himself with his back to the fireplace] Nonsense, my boy, nonsense! Youre too modest. What does she know about the real value of men at her age? [More seriously] Besides, she’s a wonderfully dutiful girl. Her father’s wish would be sacred to her. Do you know that since she grew up to years of discretion, I dont believe she has ever once given her own wish as a reason for doing anything or not doing it. It’s always “Father wishes me to,” or “Mother wouldnt like it.” It’s really almost a fault in her. I have often told her she must learn to think for herself.
     20
   
  OCTAVIUS [shaking his head] I couldnt ask her to marry me because her father wished it, Mr Ramsden.
     21
   
  RAMSDEN. Well, perhaps not. No: of course not. I see that. No: you certainly couldnt. But when you win her on your own merits, it will be a great happiness to her to fulfil her father’s desire as well as her own. Eh? Come! youll ask her, wont you?
     22
   
  OCTAVIUS [with sad gaiety] At all events I promise you I shall never ask anyone else.
     23
   
  RAMSDEN. Oh, you shant need to. She’ll accept you, my boy—although [here he suddenly becomes very serious indeed] you have one great drawback.
     24
   
  OCTAVIUS [anxiously] What drawback is that, Mr Ramsden? I should rather say which of my many drawbacks?
     25
   
  RAMSDEN. I’ll tell you, Octavius. [He takes from the table a book bound in red cloth]. I have in my hand a copy of the most infamous, the most scandalous, the most mischievous, the most blackguardly book that ever escaped burning at the hands of the common hangman. I have not read it: I would not soil my mind with such filth; but I have read what the papers say of it. The title is quite enough for me. [He reads it]. The Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket Companion. By John Tanner, M.I.R.C., Member of the Idle Rich Class.
     26
   
  OCTAVIUS [smiling] But Jack—
     27
   
  RAMSDEN [testily] For goodness’ sake, dont call him Jack under my roof [he throws the book violently down on the table. Then, somewhat relieved, he comes past the table to Octavius, and addresses him at close quarters with impressive gravity]. Now, Octavius, I know that my dead friend was right when he said you were a generous lad. I know that this man was your schoolfellow, and that you feel bound to stand by him because there was a boyish friendship between you. But I ask you to consider the altered circumstances. You were treated as a son in my friend’s house. You lived there; and your friends could not be turned from the door. This man Tanner was in and out there on your account almost from his childhood. He addresses Annie by her Christian name as freely as you do. Well, while her father was alive, that was her father’s business, not mine. This man Tanner was only a boy to him: his opinions were something to be laughed at, like a man’s hat on a child’s head. But now Tanner is a grown man and Annie a grown woman. And her father is gone. We dont as yet know the exact terms of his will; but he often talked it over with me; and I have no more doubt than I have that youre sitting there that the will appoints me Annie’s trustee and guardian. [Forcibly] Now I tell you, once for all, I cant and I wont have Annie placed in such a position that she must, out of regard for you, suffer the intimacy of this fellow Tanner. It’s not fair: it’s not right: it’s not kind. What are you going to do about it?
     28
   
  OCTAVIUS. But Ann herself has told Jack that whatever his opinions are, he will always be welcome because he knew her dear father.
     29
   
  RAMSDEN [out of patience] That girl’s mad about her duty to her parents. [He starts off like a goaded ox in the direction of John Bright, in whose expression there is no sympathy for him. As he speaks he fumes down to Herbert Spencer, who receives him still more coldly]. Excuse me, Octavius; but there are limits to social toleration. You know that I am not a bigoted or prejudiced man. You know that I am plain Roebuck Ramsden when other men who have done less have got handles to their names, because I have stood for equality and liberty of conscience while they were truckling to the Church and to the aristocracy. Whitefield and I lost chance after chance through our advanced opinions. But I draw the line at Anarchism and Free Love and that sort of thing. If I am to be Annie’s guardian, she will have to learn that she has a duty to me. I wont have it: I will not have it. She must forbid John Tanner the house; and so must you.
  The parlormaid returns.
     30
   
  OCTAVIUS. But—
     31
   
  RAMSDEN [calling his attention to the servant] Ssh! Well?
     32
   
  THE MAID. Mr Tanner wishes to see you, sir.
     33
   
  RAMSDEN. Mr Tanner!
     34
   
  OCTAVIUS. Jack!
     35
   
  RAMSDEN. How dare Mr Tanner call on me! Say I cannot see him.
     36
   
  OCTAVIUS [hurt] I am sorry you are turning my friend from your door like that.
     37
   
  THE MAID [calmly] He’s not at the door, sir. He’s upstairs in the drawing room with Miss Ramsden. He came with Mrs Whitefield and Miss Ann and Miss Robinson, sir.
  Ramsden’s feelings are beyond words.
     38
   
  OCTAVIUS [grinning] Thats very like Jack, Mr Ramsden. You must see him, even if it’s only to turn him out.
     39
   
  RAMSDEN. [hammering out his words with suppressed fury] Go upstairs and ask Mr Tanner to be good enough to step down here. [The parlormaid goes out; and Ramsden returns to the fireplace, as to a fortified position]. I must say that of all the confounded pieces of impertinence—well, if these are Anarchist manners, I hope you like them. And Annie with him! Annie! A— [he chokes].
     40
   
  OCTAVIUS. Yes: thats what surprises me. He’s so desperately afraid of Ann. There must be something the matter.
  Mr John Tanner suddenly opens the door and enters. He is too young to be described simply as a big man with a beard. But it is already plain that middle life will find him in that category. He has still some of the slimness of youth; but youthfulness is not the effect he aims at: his frock coat would befit a prime minister; and a certain high chested carriage of the shoulders, a lofty pose of the head, and the Olympian majesty with which a mane, or rather a huge wisp, of hazel colored hair is thrown back from an imposing brow, suggest Jupiter rather than Apollo. He is prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark the snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the thirty-secondth of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad. He is carefully dressed, not from the vanity that cannot resist finery, but from a sense of the importance of everything he does which leads him to make as much of paying a call as other men do of getting married or laying a foundation stone. A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a megalomaniac, who would be lost without a sense of humor.
  Just at present the sense of humor is in abeyance. To say that he is excited is nothing: all his moods are phases of excitement. He is now in the panic-stricken phase; and he walks straight up to Ramsden as if with the fixed intention of shooting him on his own hearthrug. But what he pulls from his breast pocket is not a pistol, but a foolscap document which he thrusts under the indignant nose of Ramsden as he exclaims—
     41
   
  TANNER. Ramsden: do you know what that is?
     42
   
  RAMSDEN. [loftily] No, sir.
     43
   
  TANNER. It’s a copy of Whitefield’s will. Ann got it this morning.
     44
   
  RAMSDEN. When you say Ann, you mean, I presume, Miss Whitefield.
     45
   
  TANNER. I mean our Ann, your Ann, Tavy’s Ann, and now, heaven help me, my Ann!
     46
   
  OCTAVIUS [rising, very pale] What do you mean?
     47
   
  TANNER. Mean! [He holds up the will]. Do you know who is appointed Ann’s guardian by this will?
     48
   
  RAMSDEN [coolly] I believe I am.
     49
   
  TANNER. You! You and I, man. I! I!! I!!! Both of us! [He flings the will down on the writing table].
     50
   
  RAMSDEN. You! Impossible.
     51
   
  TANNER. It’s only too hideously true. [He throws himself into Octavius’s chair]. Ramsden: get me out of it somehow. You dont know Ann as well as I do. She’ll commit every crime a respectable woman can; and she’ll justify every one of them by saying that it was the wish of her guardians. She’ll put everything on us; and we shall have no more control over her than a couple of mice over a cat.
     52
   
  OCTAVIUS. Jack: I wish you wouldnt talk like that about Ann.
     53
   
  TANNER. This chap’s in love with her: thats another complication. Well, she’ll either jilt him and say I didnt approve of him, or marry him and say you ordered her to. I tell you, this is the most staggering blow that has ever fallen on a man of my age and temperament.
     54
   
  RAMSDEN. Let me see that will, sir. [He goes to the writing table and picks it up]. I cannot believe that my old friend Whitefield would have shewn such a want of confidence in me as to associate me with—[His countenance falls as he reads].
     55
   
  TANNER. It’s all my own doing: thats the horrible irony of it. He told me one day that you were to be Ann’s guardian; and like a fool I began arguing with him about the folly of leaving a young woman under the control of an old man with obsolete ideas.
     56
   
  RAMSDEN [stupended] My ideas obsolete!!!!!!!
     57
   
  TANNER. Totally. I had just finished an essay called Down with Government by the Greyhaired; and I was full of arguments and illustrations. I said the proper thing was to combine the experience of an old hand with the vitality of a young one. Hang me if he didnt take me at my word and alter his will—it’s dated only a fortnight after that conversation—appointing me as joint guardian with you!
     58
   
  RAMSDEN [pale and determined] I shall refuse to act.
     59
   
  TANNER. Whats the good of that? Ive been refusing all the way from Richmond; but Ann keeps on saying that of course she’s only an orphan; and that she cant expect the people who were glad to come to the house in her father’s time to trouble much about her now. Thats the latest game. An orphan! It’s like hearing an ironclad talk about being at the mercy of the wind and waves.
     60
   
  OCTAVIUS. This is not fair, Jack. She is an orphan. And you ought to stand by her.
     61
   
  TANNER. Stand by her! What danger is she in? She has the law on her side; she has popular sentiment on her side; she has plenty of money and no conscience. All she wants with me is to load up all her moral responsibilities on me, and do as she likes at the expense of my character. I cant control her; and she can compromise me as much as she likes. I might as well be her husband.
     62
   
  RAMSDEN. You can refuse to accept the guardianship. I shall certainly refuse to hold it jointly with you.
     63
   
  TANNER. Yes; and what will she say to that? what does she say to it? Just that her father’s wishes are sacred to her, and that she shall always look up to me as her guardian whether I care to face the responsibility or not. Refuse! You might as well refuse to accept the embraces of a boa constrictor when once it gets round your neck.
     64
   
  OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is not kind to me, Jack.
     65
   
  TANNER [rising and going to Octavius to console him, but still lamenting] If he wanted a young guardian, why didnt he appoint Tavy?
     66
   
  RAMSDEN. Ah! why indeed?
     67
   
  OCTAVIUS. I will tell you. He sounded me about it; but I refused the trust because I loved her. I had no right to let myself be forced on her as a guardian by her father. He spoke to her about it; and she said I was right. You know I love her, Mr Ramsden; and Jack knows it too. If Jack loved a woman, I would not compare her to a boa constrictor in his presence, however much I might dislike her [he sits down between the busts and turns his face to the wall].
     68
   
  RAMSDEN. I do not believe that Whitefield was in his right senses when he made that will. You have admitted that he made it under your influence.
     69
   
  TANNER. You ought to be pretty well obliged to me for my influence. He leaves you two thousand five hundred for your trouble. He leaves Tavy a dowry for his sister and five thousand for himself.
     70
   
  OCTAVIUS [his tears flowing afresh] Oh, I cant take it. He was too good to us.
     71
   
  TANNER. You wont get it, my boy, if Ramsden upsets the will.
     72
   
  RAMSDEN. Ha! I see. You have got me in a cleft stick.
     73
   
  TANNER. He leaves me nothing but the charge of Ann’s morals, on the ground that I have already more money than is good for me. That shews that he had his wits about him, doesnt it?
     74
   
  RAMSDEN [grimly] I admit that.
     75
   
  OCTAVIUS [rising and coming from his refuge by the wall] Mr Ramsden: I think you are prejudiced against Jack. He is a man of honor, and incapable of abusing—
     76
   
  TANNER. Dont, Tavy: youll make me ill. I am not a man of honor: I am a man struck down by a dead hand. Tavy: you must marry her after all and take her off my hands. And I had set my heart on saving you from her!
     77
   
  OCTAVIUS. Oh, Jack, you talk of saving me from my highest happiness.
     78
   
  TANNER. Yes, a lifetime of happiness. If it were only the first half hour’s happiness, Tavy, I would buy it for you with my last penny. But a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
     79
   
  RAMSDEN [violently] Stuff, sir. Talk sense; or else go and waste someone else’s time: I have something better to do than listen to your fooleries [he positively kicks his way to his table and resumes his seat].
     80
   
  TANNER. You hear him, Tavy! Not an idea in his head later than eighteensixty. We cant leave Ann with no other guardian to turn to.
     81
   
  RAMSDEN. I am proud of your contempt for my character and opinions, sir. Your own are set forth in that book, I believe.
     82
   
  TANNER [eagerly going to the table] What! Youve got my book! What do you think of it?
     83
   
  RAMSDEN. Do you suppose I would read such a book, sir?
     84
   
  TANNER. Then why did you buy it?
     85
   
  RAMSDEN. I did not buy it, sir. It has been sent me by some foolish lady who seems to admire your views. I was about to dispose of it when Octavius interrupted me. I shall do so now, with your permission. [He throws the book into the waste paper basket with such vehemence that Tanner recoils under the impression that it is being thrown at his head].
     86
   
  TANNER. You have no more manners than I have myself. However, that saves ceremony between us. [He sits down again]. What do you intend to do about this will?
     87
   
  OCTAVIUS. May I make a suggestion?
     88
   
  RAMSDEN. Certainly, Octavius.
     89
   
  OCTAVIUS. Arnt we forgetting that Ann herself may have some wishes in this matter?
     90
   
  RAMSDEN. I quite intend that Annie’s wishes shall be consulted in every reasonable way. But she is only a woman, and a young and inexperienced woman at that.
     91
   
  TANNER. Ramsden: I begin to pity you.
     92
   
  RAMSDEN [hotly] I dont want to know how you feel towards me, Mr Tanner.
     93
   
  TANNER. Ann will do just exactly what she likes. And whats more, she’ll force us to advise her to do it; and she’ll put the blame on us if it turns out badly. So, as Tavy is longing to see her—
     94
   
  OCTAVIUS [shyly] I am not, Jack.
     95
   
  TANNER. You lie, Tavy: you are. So lets have her down from the drawing room and ask her what she intends us to do. Off with you, Tavy, and fetch her. [Tavy turns to go]. And dont be long; for the strained relations between myself and Ramsden will make the interval rather painful. [Ramsden compresses his lips, but says nothing].
     96
   
  OCTAVIUS. Never mind him, Mr Ramsden. He’s not serious. [He goes out].
     97
   
  RAMSDEN [very deliberately] Mr Tanner: you are the most impudent person I have ever met.
     98
   
  TANNER [seriously] I know it, Ramsden. Yet even I cannot wholly conquer shame. We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. Why, youre ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing youre not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it; and even that only means that youre ashamed to have heterodox opinions. Look at the effect I produce because my fairy godmother withheld from me this gift of shame. I have every possible virtue that a man can have except—
     99
   
  RAMSDEN. I am glad you think so well of yourself.
    100
   
  TANNER. All you mean by that is that you think I ought to be ashamed of talking about my virtues. You dont mean that I havnt got them: you know perfectly well that I am as sober and honest a citizen as yourself, as truthful personally, and much more truthful politically and morally.
    101
   
  RAMSDEN [touched on his most sensitive point] I deny that. I will not allow you or any man to treat me as if I were a mere member of the British public. I detest its prejudices; I scorn its narrowness; I demand the right to think for myself. You pose as an advanced man. Let me tell you that I was an advanced man before you were born.
    102
   
  TANNER. I knew it was a long time ago.
    103
   
  RAMSDEN. I am as advanced as ever I was. I defy you to prove that I have ever hauled down the flag. I am more advanced than ever I was. I grow more advanced every day.
    104
   
  TANNER. More advanced in years, Polonius.
    105
   
  RAMSDEN. Polonius! So you are Hamlet, I suppose.
    106
   
  TANNER. No: I am only the most impudent person youve ever met. Thats your notion of a thoroughly bad character. When you want to give me a piece of your mind, you ask yourself, as a just and upright man, what is the worst you can fairly say to me. Thief, liar, forger, adulterer, perjurer, glutton, drunkard? Not one of these names fits me. You have to fall back on my deficiency in shame. Well, I admit it. I even congratulate myself; for if I were ashamed of my real self, I should cut as stupid a figure as any of the rest of you. Cultivate a little impudence, Ramsden; and you will become quite a remarkable man.
    107
   
  RAMSDEN. I have no—
    108
   
  TANNER. You have no desire for that sort of notoriety. Bless you, I knew that answer would come as well as I know that a box of matches will come out of an automatic machine when I put a penny in the slot: you would be ashamed to say anything else.
  The crushing retort for which Mr Ramsden has been visibly collecting his forces is lost for ever; for at this point Octavius returns with Miss Ann Whitefield and her mother; and Ramsden springs up and hurries to the door to receive them. Whether Ann is good-looking or not depends upon your taste; also and perhaps chiefly on your age and sex. To Octavius she is an enchantingly beautiful woman, in whose presence the world becomes transfigured, and the puny limits of individual consciousness are suddenly made infinite by a mystic memory of the whole life of the race to its beginnings in the east, or even back to the paradise from which it fell. She is to him the reality of romance, the inner good sense of nonsense, the unveiling of his eyes, the freeing of his soul, the abolition of time, place, and circumstance, the etherealization of his blood into rapturous rivers of the very water of life itself, the revelation of all the mysteries and the sanctification of all the dogmas. To her mother she is, to put it as moderately as possible, nothing whatever of the kind. Not that Octavius’s admiration is in any way ridiculous or discreditable. Ann is a well formed creature, as far as that goes; and she is perfectly ladylike, graceful, and comely, with ensnaring eyes and hair. Besides, instead of making herself an eyesore, like her mother, she has devised a mourning costume of black and violet silk which does honor to her late father and reveals the family tradition of brave unconventionality by which Ramsden sets such store.
  But all this is beside the point as an explanation of Ann’s charm. Turn up her nose, give a cast to her eye, replace her black and violet confection by the apron and feathers of a flower girl, strike all the aitches out of her speech, and Ann would still make men dream. Vitality is as common as humanity; but, like humanity, it sometimes rises to genius; and Ann is one of the vital geniuses. Not at all, if you please, an oversexed person: that is a vital defect, not a true excess. She is a perfectly respectable, perfectly self-controlled woman, and looks it; though her pose is fashionably frank and impulsive. She inspires confidence as a person who will do nothing she does not mean to do; also some fear, perhaps, as a woman who will probably do everything she means to do without taking more account of other people than may be necessary and what she calls right. In short, what the weaker of her own sex sometimes call a cat.
  Nothing can be more decorous than her entry and her reception by Ramsden, whom she kisses. The late Mr Whitefield would be gratified almost to impatience by the long faces of the men (except Tanner, who is fidgety), the silent handgrasps, the sympathetic placing of chairs, the sniffing of the widow, and the liquid eye of the daughter, whose heart, apparently will not let her control her tongue to speech. Ramsden and Octavius take the two chairs from the wall, and place them for the two ladies; but Ann comes to Tanner and takes his chair, which he offers with a brusque gesture, subsequently relieving his irritation by sitting down on the corner of the writing table with studied indecorum. Octavius gives Mrs Whitefield a chair next Ann, and himself takes the vacant one which Ramsden has placed under the nose of the effigy of Mr. Herbert Spencer.
  Mrs. Whitefield, by the way, is a little woman, whose faded flaxen hair looks like straw on an egg. She has an expression of muddled shrewdness, a squeak of protest in her voice, and an odd air of continually elbowing away some larger person who is crushing her into a corner. One guesses her as one of those women who are conscious of being treated as silly and negligible, and who, without having strength enough to assert themselves effectually, at any rate never submit to their fate. There is a touch of chivalry in Octavius’s scrupulous attention to her, even whilst his whole soul is absorbed by Ann.
  Ramsden goes solemnly back to his magisterial seat at the writing table, ignoring Tanner, and opens the proceedings.
    109
   
  RAMSDEN. I am sorry, Annie, to force business on you at a sad time like the present. But your poor dear father’s will has raised a very serious question. You have read it, I believe?
  Ann assents with a nod and a catch of her breath, too much affected to speak.
  I must say I am surprised to find Mr Tanner named as joint guardian and trustee with myself of you and Rhoda. [A pause. They all look portentous; but they have nothing to say. Ramsden, a little ruffled by the lack of any responses, continues] I dont know that I can consent to act under such conditions. Mr Tanner has, I understand, some objection also; but I do not profess to understand its nature: he will no doubt speak for himself. But we are agreed that we can decide nothing until we know your views. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to choose between my sole guardianship and that of Mr Tanner; for I fear it is impossible for us to undertake a joint arrangement.
    110
   
  ANN [in a low musical voice] Mamma—
    111
   
  MRS WHITEFIELD [hastily] Now, Ann, I do beg you not to put it on me. I have no opinion on the subject; and if I had, it would probably not be attended to. I am quite content with whatever you three think best.
  Tanner turns his head and looks fixedly at Ramsden, who angrily refuses to receive this mute communication.
    112
   
  ANN [resuming in the same gentle voice, ignoring her mother’s bad taste] Mamma knows that she is not strong enough to bear the whole responsibility for me and Rhoda without some help and advice. Rhoda must have a guardian; and though I am older, I do not think any young unmarried woman should be left quite to her own guidance. I hope you agree with me, Granny?
    113
   
  TANNER [starting] Granny! Do you intend to call your guardians Granny?
    114
   
  ANN. Dont be foolish, Jack. Mr Ramsden has always been Grandpapa Roebuck to me: I am Granny’s Annie; and he is Annie’s Granny. I christened him so when I first learned to speak.
    115
   
  RAMSDEN [sarcastically] I hope you are satisfied, Mr Tanner. Go on, Annie: I quite agree with you.
    116
   
  ANN. Well, if I am to have a guardian, can I set aside anybody whom my dear father appointed for me?
    117
   
  RAMSDEN [biting his lip] You approve of your father’s choice, then?
    118
   
  ANN. It is not for me to approve or disapprove. I accept it. My father loved me and knew best what was good for me.
    119
   
  RAMSDEN. Of course I understand your feeling, Annie. It is what I should have expected of you; and it does you credit. But it does not settle the question so completely as you think. Let me put a case to you. Suppose you were to discover that I had been guilty of some disgraceful action—that I was not the man your poor dear father took me for! Would you still consider it right that I should be Rhoda’s guardian?
    120
   
  ANN. I cant imagine you doing anything disgraceful, Granny.
    121
   
  TANNER [to Ramsden] You havnt done anything of the sort, have you?
    122
   
  RAMSDEN [indignantly] No, sir.
    123
   
  MRS WHITEFIELD [placidly] Well, then, why suppose it?
    124
   
  ANN. You see, Granny, Mamma would not like me to suppose it.
    125
   
  RAMSDEN [much perplexed] You are both so full of natural and affectionate feeling in these family matters that it is very hard to put the situation fairly before you.
    126
   
  TANNER. Besides, my friend, you are not putting the situation fairly before them.
    127
   
  RAMSDEN [sulkily] Put it yourself, then.
    128
   
  TANNER. I will. Ann: Ramsden thinks I am not fit to be your guardian; and I quite agree with him. He considers that if your father had read my book, he wouldnt have appointed me. That book is the disgraceful action he has been talking about. He thinks it’s your duty for Rhoda’s sake to ask him to act alone and to make me withdraw. Say the word; and I will.
    129
   
  ANN. But I havnt read your book, Jack.
    130
   
  TANNER [diving at the waste-paper basket and fishing the book out for her] Then read it at once and decide.
    131
   
  RAMSDEN [vehemently] If I am to be your guardian, I positively forbid you to read that book, Annie. [He smites the table with his fist and rises].
    132
   
  ANN. Of course not if you dont wish it. [She puts the book on the table].
    133
   
  TANNER. If one guardian is to forbid you to read the other guardian’s book, how are we to settle it? Suppose I order you to read it! What about your duty to me?
    134
   
  ANN [gently] I am sure you would never purposely force me into a painful dilemma, Jack.
    135
   
  RAMSDEN [irritably] Yes, yes, Annie: this is all very well, and, as I said, quite natural and becoming. But you must make a choice one way or the other. We are as much in a dilemma as you.
    136
   
  ANN. I feel that I am too young, too inexperienced, to decide. My father’s wishes are sacred to me.

 MRS WHITEFIELD. If you two men wont carry them out I must say it is rather hard that you should put the responsibility on Ann. It seems to me that people are always putting things on other people in this world.
    138
   
  RAMSDEN. I am sorry you take it in that way.
    139
   
  ANN [touchingly] Do you refuse to accept me as your ward, Granny?
    140
   
  RAMSDEN. No: I never said that. I greatly object to act with Mr Tanner: thats all.
    141
   
  MRS WHITEFIELD. Why? Whats the matter with poor Jack?
    142
   
  TANNER. My views are too advanced for him.
    143
   
  RAMSDEN [indignantly] They are not. I deny it.
    144
   
  ANN. Of course not. What nonsense! Nobody is more advanced than Granny. I am sure it is Jack himself who has made all the difficulty. Come Jack! be kind to me in my sorrow. You dont refuse to accept me as your ward, do you?
    145
   
  TANNER [gloomily] No. I let myself in for it; so I suppose I must face it. [He turns away to the bookcase, and stands there, moodily studying the titles of the volumes].
    146
   
  ANN [rising and expanding with subdued but gushing delight] Then we are all agreed; and my dear father’s will is to be carried out. You dont know what a joy that is to me and to my mother! [She goes to Ramsden and presses both his hands, saying] And I shall have my dear Granny to help and advise me. [She casts a glance at Tanner over her shoulder]. And Jack the Giant Killer. [She goes past her mother to Octavius]. And Jack’s inseparable friend Ricky-ticky-tavy [he blushes and looks inexpressibly foolish].
    147
   
  MRS WHITEFIELD [rising and shaking her widow’s weeds straight] Now that you are Ann’s guardian, Mr Ramsden, I wish you would speak to her about her habit of giving people nicknames. They cant be expected to like it. [She moves towards the door].
    148
   
  ANN. How can you say such a thing, Mamma! [Glowing with affectionate remorse] Oh, I wonder can you be right! Have I been inconsiderate! [She turns to Octavius, who is sitting astride his chair with his elbows on the back of it. Putting her hand on his forehead she turns his face up suddenly]. Do you want to be treated like a grown-up man? Must I call you Mr Robinson in future?
    149
   
  OCTAVIUS [earnestly] Oh please call me Ricky-ticky-tavy. “Mr Robinson” would hurt me cruelly. [She laughs and pats his cheek with her finger; then comes back to Ramsden]. You know I’m beginning to think that Granny is rather a piece of impertinence. But I never dreamt of its hurting you.
    150
   
  RAMSDEN [breezily, as he pats her affectionately on the back] My dear Annie, nonsense. I insist on Granny. I wont answer to any other name than Annie’s Granny.
    151
   
  ANN [gratefully] You all spoil me, except Jack.
    152
   
  TANNER [over his shoulder, from the bookcase] I think you ought to call me Mr Tanner.
    153
   
  ANN [gently] No you dont, Jack. Thats like the things you say on purpose to shock people: those who know you pay no attention to them. But, if you like, I’ll call you after your famous ancestor Don Juan.
    154
   
  RAMSDEN. Don Juan!
    155
   
  ANN [innocently] Oh, is there any harm in it? I didnt know. Then I certainly wont call you that. May I call you Jack until I can think of something else?
    156
   
  TANNER. Oh, for Heaven’s sake dont try to invent anything worse. I capitulate. I consent to Jack. I embrace Jack. Here endeth my first and last attempt to assert my authority.
    157
   
  ANN. You see, Mamma, they all really like to have pet names.
    158
   
  MRS WHITEFIELD. Well, I think you might at least drop them until we are out of mourning.
    159
   
  ANN [reproachfully, stricken to the soul] Oh, how could you remind me, mother? [She hastily leaves the room to conceal her emotion].
    160
   
  MRS WHITEFIELD. Of course. My fault as usual! [She follows Ann].
    161
   
  TANNER [coming from the bookcase] Ramsden: we’re beaten—smashed—nonentitized, like her mother.
    162
   
  RAMSDEN. Stuff, sir. [He follows Mrs Whitefield out of the room].
    163
   
  TANNER [left alone with Octavius, stares whimsically at him] Tavy: do you want to count for something in the world?
    164
   
  OCTAVIUS. I want to count for something as a poet: I want to write a great play.
    165
   
  TANNER. With Ann as the heroine?
    166
   
  OCTAVIUS. Yes: I confess it.
    167
   
  TANNER. Take care, Tavy. The play with Ann as the heroine is all right; but if youre not very careful, by heaven she’ll marry you.
    168
   
  OCTAVIUS [sighing] No such luck, Jack!
    169
   
  TANNER. Why, man, your head is in the lioness’s mouth: you are half swallowed already—in three bites—Bite One, Ricky; Bite Two, Ticky; Bite Three, Tavy; and down you go.
    170
   
  OCTAVIUS. She is the same to everybody, Jack: you know her ways.
    171
   
  TANNER. Yes: she breaks everybody’s back with the stroke of her paw; but the question is, which of us will she eat? My own opinion is that she means to eat you.
    172
   
  OCTAVIUS [rising, pettishly] It’s horrible to talk like that about her when she is upstairs crying for her father. But I do so want her to eat me that I can bear your brutalities because they give me hope.
    173
   
  TANNER. Tavy: thats the devilish side of a woman’s fascination: she makes you will your own destruction.
    174
   
  OCTAVIUS. But it’s not destruction: it’s fulfilment.
    175
   
  TANNER. Yes, of her purpose; and that purpose is neither her happiness nor yours, but Nature’s. Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation. She sacrifices herself to it: do you think she will hesitate to sacrifice you?
    176
   
  OCTAVIUS. Why, it is just because she is self-sacrificing that she will not sacrifice those she loves.
    177
   
  TANNER. That is the profoundest of mistakes, Tavy. It is the self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most recklessly. Because they are unselfish, they are kind in little things. Because they have a purpose which is not their own purpose, but that of the whole universe, a man is nothing to them but an instrument of that purpose.
    178
   
  OCTAVIUS. Dont be ungenerous, Jack. They take the tenderest care of us.
    179
   
  TANNER. Yes, as a soldier takes care of his rifle or a musician of his violin. But do they allow us any purpose or freedom of our own? Will they lend us to one another? Can the strongest man escape from them when once he is appropriated? They tremble when we are in danger, and weep when we die; but the tears are not for us, but for a father wasted, a son’s breeding thrown away. They accuse us of treating them as a mere means to our pleasure; but how can so feeble and transient a folly as a man’s selfish pleasure enslave a woman as the whole purpose of Nature embodied in a woman can enslave a man?
    180
   
  OCTAVIUS. What matter, if the slavery makes us happy?
    181
   
  TANNER. No matter at all if you have no purpose of your own, and are, like most men, a mere breadwinner. But you, Tavy, are an artist: that is, you have a purpose as absorbing and as unscrupulous as a woman’s purpose.
    182
   
  OCTAVIUS. Not unscrupulous.
    183
   
  TANNER. Quite unscrupulous. The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it for his. He steals the mother’s milk and blackens it to make printer’s ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of child-bearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a blood-sucker, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist’s work is to shew us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new men. In the rage of that creation he is as ruthless as the woman, as dangerous to her as she to him, and as horribly fascinating. Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman. Which shall use up the other? that is the issue between them. And it is all the deadlier because, in your romanticist cant, they love one another.
    184
   
  OCTAVIUS. Even if it were so—and I dont admit it for a moment—it is out of the deadliest struggles that we get the noblest characters.
    185
   
  TANNER. Remember that the next time you meet a grizzly bear or a Bengal tiger, Tavy.
    186
   
  OCTAVIUS. I meant where there is love, Jack.
    187
   
  TANNER. Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no love sincerer than the love of food. I think Ann loves you that way: she patted your cheek as if it were a nicely underdone chop.
    188
   
  OCTAVIUS. You know, Jack, I should have to run away from you if I did not make it a fixed rule not to mind anything you say. You come out with perfectly revolting things sometimes.
  Ramsden returns, followed by Ann. They come in quickly, with their former leisurely air of decorous grief changed to one of genuine concern, and, on Ramsden’s part, of worry. He comes between the two men, intending to address Octavius, but pulls himself up abruptly as he sees Tanner.
    189
   
  RAMSDEN. I hardly expected to find you still here, Mr Tanner.
    190
   
  TANNER. Am I in the way? Good morning, fellow guardian [he goes towards the door].
    191
   
  ANN. Stop, Jack. Granny: he must know, sooner or later.
    192
   
  RAMSDEN. Octavius: I have a very serious piece of news for you. It is of the most private and delicate nature—of the most painful nature too, I am sorry to say. Do you wish Mr Tanner to be present whilst I explain?
    193
   
  OCTAVIUS [turning pale] I have no secrets from Jack.
    194
   
  RAMSDEN. Before you decide that finally, let me say that the news concerns your sister, and that it is terrible news.
    195
   
  OCTAVIUS. Violet! What has happened? Is she—dead?
    196
   
  RAMSDEN. I am not sure that it is not even worse than that.
    197
   
  OCTAVIUS. Is she badly hurt? Has there been an accident?
    198
   
  RAMSDEN. No: nothing of that sort.
    199
   
  TANNER. Ann: will you have the common humanity to tell us what the matter is?
    200
   
  ANN [half whispering] I cant. Violet has done something dreadful. We shall have to get her away somewhere. [She flutters to the writing table and sits in Ramsden’s chair, leaving the three men to fight it out between them].
    201
   
  OCTAVIUS [enlightened] Is that what you meant, Mr Ramsden?
    202
   
  RAMSDEN. Yes. [Octavius sinks upon a chair, crushed]. I am afraid there is no doubt that Violet did not really go to Eastbourne three weeks ago when we thought she was with the Parry Whitefields. And she called on a strange doctor yesterday with a wedding ring on her finger. Mrs Parry Whitefield met her there by chance; and so the whole thing came out.
    203
   
  OCTAVIUS [rising with his fists clenched] Who is the scoundrel?
    204
   
  ANN. She wont tell us.
    205
   
  OCTAVIUS [collapsing into the chair again] What a frightful thing!
    206
   
  TANNER [with angry sarcasm] Dreadful, Appalling. Worse than death, as Ramsden says. [He comes to Octavius]. What would you not give, Tavy, to turn it into a railway accident, with all her bones broken, or something equally respectable and deserving of sympathy?
    207
   
  OCTAVIUS. Dont be brutal, Jack.
    208
   
  TANNER. Brutal! Good Heavens, man, what are you crying for? Here is a woman we all supposed to be making bad water color sketches, practising Grieg and Brahms, gadding about to concerts and parties, wasting her life and her money. We suddenly learn that she has turned from these sillinesses to the fulfilment of her highest purpose and greatest function—to increase, multiply, and replenish the earth. And instead of admiring her courage and rejoicing in her instinct; instead of crowning the completed womanhood and raising the triumphal strain of “Unto us a child is born: unto us a son is given,” here you are—you who have been as merry as grigs in your mourning for the dead—all pulling long faces and looking as ashamed and disgraced as if the girl had committed the vilest of crimes.
    209
   
  RAMSDEN [roaring with rage] I will not have these abominations uttered in my house [he smites the writing table with his fist].
    210
   
  TANNER. Look here: if you insult me again I’ll take you at your word and leave your house. Ann: where is Violet now?
    211
   
  ANN. Why? Are you going to her?
    212
   
  TANNER. Of course I am going to her. She wants help; she wants money; she wants respect and congratulation; she wants every chance for her child. She does not seem likely to get it from you: she shall from me. Where is she?
    213
   
  ANN. Dont be so headstrong, Jack. She’s upstairs.
    214
   
  TANNER. What! Under Ramsden’s sacred roof! Go and do your miserable duty, Ramsden. Hunt her out into the street. Cleanse your threshold from her contamination. Vindicate the purity of your English home. I’ll go for a cab.
    215
   
  ANN [alarmed] Oh, Granny, you mustnt do that.
    216
   
  OCTAVIUS [broken-heartedly, rising] I’ll take her away, Mr Ramsden. She had no right to come to your house.
    217
   
  RAMSDEN [indignantly] But I am only too anxious to help her. [Turning on Tanner] How dare you, sir, impute such monstrous intentions to me? I protest against it. I am ready to put down my last penny to save her from being driven to run to you for protection.
    218
   
  TANNER [subsiding] It’s all right, then. He’s not going to act up to his principles. It’s agreed that we all stand by Violet.
    219
   
  OCTAVIUS. But who is the man? He can make reparation by marrying her; and he shall, or he shall answer for it to me.
    220
   
  RAMSDEN. He shall, Octavius. There you speak like a man.
    221
   
  TANNER. Then you dont think him a scoundrel, after all?
    222
   
  OCTAVIUS. Not a scoundrel! He is a heartless scoundrel.
    223
   
  RAMSDEN. A damned scoundrel. I beg your pardon, Annie; but I can say no less.
    224
   
  TANNER. So we are to marry your sister to a damned scoundrel by way of reforming her character! On my soul, I think you are all mad.
    225
   
  ANN. Dont be absurd, Jack. Of course you are quite right, Tavy; but we dont know who he is: Violet wont tell us.
    226
   
  TANNER. What on earth does it matter who he is? He’s done his part; and Violet must do the rest.
    227
   
  RAMSDEN [beside himself] Stuff! lunacy! There is a rascal in our midst, a libertine, a villain worse than a murderer; and we are not to learn who he is! In our ignorance we are to shake him by the hand; to introduce him into our homes; to trust our daughters with him; to—to—
    228
   
  ANN [coaxingly] There, Granny, dont talk so loud. It’s most shocking: we must all admit that; but if Violet wont tell us, what can we do? Nothing. Simply nothing.
    229
   
  RAMSDEN. Hmph! I’m not so sure of that. If any man has paid Violet any special attention, we can easily find that out. If there is any man of notoriously loose principles among us—
    230
   
  TANNER. Ahem!
    231
   
  RAMSDEN [raising his voice] Yes, sir, I repeat, if there is any man of notoriously loose principles among us—
    232
   
  TANNER. Or any man notoriously lacking in self-control.
    233
   
  RAMSDEN [aghast] Do you dare to suggest that I am capable of such an act?
    234
   
  TANNER. My dear Ramsden, this is an act of which every man is capable. That is what comes of getting at cross purposes with Nature. The suspicion you have just flung at me clings to us all. It’s a sort of mud that sticks to the judge’s ermine or the cardinal’s robe as fast as to the rags of the tramp. Come, Tavy! dont look so bewildered: it might have been me: it might have been Ramsden; just as it might have been anybody. If it had, what could we do but lie and protest—as Ramsden is going to protest.
    235
   
  RAMSDEN [choking] I—I—I—
    236
   
  TANNER. Guilt itself could not stammer more confusedly. And yet you know perfectly well he’s innocent, Tavy.
    237
   
  RAMSDEN [exhausted] I am glad you admit that, sir. I admit, myself, that there is an element of truth in what you say, grossly as you may distort it to gratify your malicious humor. I hope, Octavius, no suspicion of me is possible in your mind.
    238
   
  OCTAVIUS. Of you! No, not for a moment.
    239
   
  TANNER [drily] I think he suspects me just a little.
    240
   
  OCTAVIUS. Jack: you couldnt—you wouldnt—
    241
   
  TANNER. Why not?
    242
   
  OCTAVIUS [appalled] Why not!
    243
   
  TANNER. Oh, well, I’ll tell you why not. First, you would feel bound to quarrel with me. Second, Violet doesnt like me. Third, if I had the honor of being the father of Violet’s child, I should boast of it instead of denying it. So be easy: our friendship is not in danger.
    244
   
  OCTAVIUS. I should have put away the suspicion with horror if only you would think and feel naturally about it. I beg your pardon.
    245
   
  TANNER. My pardon! nonsense! And now lets sit down and have a family council. [He sits down. The rest follow his example, more or less under protest]. Violet is going to do the State a service; consequently she must be packed abroad like a criminal until it’s over. Whats happening upstairs?
    246
   
  ANN. Violet is in the housekeeper’s room—by herself, of course.
    247
   
  TANNER. Why not in the drawingroom?
    248
   
  ANN. Dont be absurd, Jack. Miss Ramsden is in the drawing-room with my mother, considering what to do.
    249
   
  TANNER. Oh! the housekeeper’s room is the penitentiary, I suppose; and the prisoner is waiting to be brought before her judges. The old cats!
    250
   
  ANN. Oh, Jack!
    251
   
  RAMSDEN. You are at present a guest beneath the roof of one of the old cats, sir. My sister is the mistress of this house.
    252
   
  TANNER. She would put me in the housekeeper’s room, too, if she dared, Ramsden. However, I withdraw cats. Cats would have more sense. Ann: as your guardian, I order you to go to Violet at once and be particularly kind to her.
    253
   
  ANN. I have seen her, Jack. And I am sorry to say I am afraid she is going to be rather obstinate about going abroad. I think Tavy ought to speak to her about it.
    254
   
  OCTAVIUS. How can I speak to her about such a thing [he breaks down]?
    255
   
  ANN. Dont break down, Ricky. Try to bear it for all our sakes.
    256
   
  RAMSDEN. Life is not all plays and poems, Octavius. Come! face it like a man.
    257
   
  TANNER [chafing again] Poor dear brother! Poor dear friends of the family! Poor dear Tabbies and Grimalkins! Poor dear everybody except the woman who is going to risk her life to create another life! Tavy: dont you be a selfish ass. Away with you and talk to Violet; and bring her down here if she cares to come. [Octavius rises]. Tell her we’ll stand by her.
    258
   
  RAMSDEN [rising] No, sir—
    259
   
  TANNER [rising also and interrupting him] Oh, we understand: it’s against your conscience; but still youll do it.
    260
   
  OCTAVIUS. I assure you all, on my word, I never meant to be selfish. It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.
    261
   
  TANNER. My dear Tavy, your pious English habit of regarding the world as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in, occasionally leads you to think about your own confounded principles when you should be thinking about other people’s necessities. The need of the present hour is a happy mother and a healthy baby. Bend your energies on that; and you will see your way clearly enough.
  Octavius, much perplexed, goes out.
    262
   
  RAMSDEN [facing Tanner impressively] And Morality, sir? What is to become of that?
    263
   
  TANNER. Meaning a weeping Magdalen and an innocent child branded with her shame. Not in our circle, thank you. Morality can go to its father the devil.
    264
   
  RAMSDEN. I thought so, sir. Morality sent to the devil to please our libertines, male and female. That is to be the future of England, is it?
    265
   
  TANNER. Oh, England will survive your disapproval. Meanwhile, I understand that you agree with me as to the practical course we are to take?
    266
   
  RAMSDEN. Not in your spirit, sir. Not for your reasons.
    267
   
  TANNER. You can explain that if anybody calls you to account, here or hereafter. [He turns away, and plants himself in front of Mr Herbert Spencer, at whom he stares gloomily].
    268
   
  ANN [rising and coming to Ramsden] Granny: hadnt you better go up to the drawing room and tell them what we intend to do?
    269
   
  RAMSDEN [looking pointedly at Tanner] I hardly like to leave you alone with this gentleman. Will you not come with me?
    270
   
  ANN. Miss Ramsden would not like to speak about it before me, Granny. I ought not to be present.
    271
   
  RAMSDEN. You are right: I should have thought of that. You are a good girl, Annie.
  He pats her on the shoulder. She looks up at him with beaming eyes; and he goes out, much moved. Having disposed of him, she looks at Tanner. His back being turned to her, she gives a moment’s attention to her personal appearance, then softly goes to him and speaks almost into his ear.
    272
   
  ANN. Jack [he turns with a start]: are you glad that you are my guardian? You dont mind being made responsible for me, I hope.
    273
   
  TANNER. The latest addition to your collection of scapegoats, eh?
    274
   
  ANN. Oh, that stupid old joke of yours about me! Do please drop it. Why do you say things that you know must pain me? I do my best to please you, Jack: I suppose I may tell you so now that you are my guardian. You will make me so unhappy if you refuse to be friends with me.
    275
   
  TANNER [studying her as gloomily as he studied the bust] You need not go begging for my regard. How unreal our moral judgments are! You seem to me to have absolutely no conscience—only hypocrisy; and you cant see the difference—yet there is a sort of fascination about you. I always attend to you, somehow. I should miss you if I lost you.
    276
   
  ANN [tranquilly slipping her arm into his and walking about with him] But isnt that only natural, Jack? We have known each other since we were children. Do you remember—
    277
   
  TANNER [abruptly breaking loose] Stop! I remember everything.
    278
   
  ANN. Oh, I daresay we were often very silly; but—
    279
   
  TANNER. I wont have it, Ann. I am no more that schoolboy now than I am the dotard of ninety I shall grow into if I live long enough. It is over: let me forget it.
    280
   
  ANN. Wasnt it a happy time? [She attempts to take his arm again].
    281
   
  TANNER. Sit down and behave yourself. [He makes her sit down in the chair next the writing table]. No doubt it was a happy time for you. You were a good girl and never compromised yourself. And yet the wickedest child that ever was slapped could hardly have had a better time. I can understand the success with which you bullied the other girls: your virtue imposed on them. But tell me this: did you ever know a good boy?
    282
   
  ANN. Of course. All boys are foolish sometimes; but Tavy was always a really good boy.
    283
   
  TANNER [struck by this] Yes: youre right. For some reason you never tempted Tavy.
    284
   
  ANN. Tempted! Jack!
    285
   
  TANNER. Yes, my dear Lady Mephistopheles, tempted. You were insatiably curious as to what a boy might be capable of, and diabolically clever at getting through his guard and surprising his inmost secrets.
    286
   
  ANN. What nonsense! All because you used to tell me long stories of the wicked things you had done—silly boy’s tricks! And you call such things inmost secrets! Boys’ secrets are just like men’s; and you know what they are!
    287
   
  TANNER [obstinately] No I dont. What are they, pray?
    288
   
  ANN. Why, the things they tell everybody, of course.
    289
   
  TANNER. Now I swear I told you things I told no one else. You lured me into a compact by which we were to have no secrets from one another. We were to tell one another everything. I didnt notice that you never told me anything.
    290
   
  ANN. You didnt want to talk about me, Jack. You wanted to talk about yourself.
    291
   
  TANNER. Ah, true, horribly true, But what a devil of a child you must have been to know that weakness and to play on it for the satisfaction of your own curiosity! I wanted to brag to you, to make myself interesting. And I found myself doing all sorts of mischievous things simply to have something to tell you about. I fought with boys I didnt hate; I lied about things I might just as well have told the truth about; I stole things I didnt want; I kissed little girls I didnt care for. It was all bravado: passionless and therefore unreal.
    292
   
  ANN. I never told of you, Jack.
    293
   
  TANNER. No; but if you had wanted to stop me you would have told of me. You wanted me to go on.
    294
   
  ANN [flashing out] Oh, thats not true: it’s not true, Jack. I never wanted you to do those dull, disappointing, brutal, stupid, vulgar things. I always hoped that it would be something really heroic at last. [Recovering herself] Excuse me, Jack; but the things you did were never a bit like the things I wanted you to do. They often gave me great uneasiness; but I could not tell of you and get you into trouble. And you were only a boy. I knew you would grow out of them. Perhaps I was wrong.
    295
   
  TANNER [sardonically] Do not give way to remorse, Ann. At least nineteen twentieths of the exploits I confessed to you were pure lies. I soon noticed that you didnt like the true stories.
    296
   
  ANN. Of course I knew that some of the things couldnt have happened. But—
    297
   
  TANNER. You are going to remind me that some of the most disgraceful ones did.
    298
   
  ANN [fondly, to his great terror] I dont want to remind you of anything. But I knew the people they happened to, and heard about them.
    299
   
  TANNER. Yes; but even the true stories were touched up for telling. A sensitive boy’s humiliations may be very good fun for ordinary thickskinned grown-ups; but to the boy himself they are so acute, so ignominious, that he cannot confess them—cannot but deny them passionately. However, perhaps it was as well for me that I romanced a bit; for, on the one occasion when I told you the truth, you threatened to tell of me.
    300
   
  ANN. Oh, never. Never once.
    301
   
  TANNER. Yes, you did. Do you remember a dark-eyed girl named Rachel Rosetree? [Ann’s brows contract for an instant involuntarily]. I got up a love affair with her; and we met one night in the garden and walked about very uncomfortably with our arms round one another, and kissed at parting, and were most conscientiously romantic. If that love affair had gone on, it would have bored me to death; but it didnt go on; for the next thing that happened was that Rachel cut me because she found out that I had told you. How did she find it out? From you. You went to her and held the guilty secret over her head, leading her a life of abject terror and humiliation by threatening to tell on her.
    302
   
  ANN. And a very good thing for her, too. It was my duty to stop her misconduct; and she is thankful to me for it now.
    303
   
  TANNER. Is she?
    304
   
  ANN. She ought to be, at all events.
    305
   
  TANNER. It was not your duty to stop my misconduct, I suppose.
    306
   
  ANN. I did stop it by stopping her.
    307
   
  TANNER. Are you sure of that? You stopped my telling you about my adventures; but how do you know that you stopped the adventures?
    308
   
  ANN. Do you mean to say that you went on in the same way with other girls?
    309
   
  TANNER. No. I had enough of that sort of romantic tomfoolery with Rachel.
    310
   
  ANN [unconvinced] Then why did you break off our confidences and become quite strange to me?
    311
   
  TANNER [enigmatically] It happened just then that I got something that I wanted to keep all to myself instead of sharing it with you.
    312
   
  ANN. I am sure I shouldnt have asked for any of it if you had grudged it.
    313
   
  TANNER. It wasnt a box of sweets, Ann. It was something youd never have let me call my own.
    314
   
  ANN [incredulously] What?
    315
   
  TANNER. My soul.
    316
   
  ANN. Oh, do be sensible, Jack. You know youre talking nonsense.
    317
   
  TANNER. The most solemn earnest, Ann. You didnt notice at that time that you were getting a soul too. But you were. It was not for nothing that you suddenly found you had a moral duty to chastise and reform Rachel. Up to that time you had traded pretty extensively in being a good child; but you had never set up a sense of duty to others. Well, I set one up too. Up to that time I had played the boy buccaneer with no more conscience than a fox in a poultry farm. But now I began to have scruples, to feel obligations, to find that veracity and honor were no longer goody-goody expressions in the mouths of grown-up people, but compelling principle in myself.
    318
   
  ANN [quietly] Yes, I suppose youre right. You were beginning to be a man, and I to be a woman.
    319
   
  TANNER. Are you sure it was not that we were beginning to be something more? What does the beginning of manhood and womanhood mean in most people’s mouths? You know: it means the beginning of love. But love began long before that for me. Love played its part in the earliest dreams and follies and romances I can remember—may I say the earliest follies and romances we can remember?—though we did not understand it at the time. No: the change that came to me was the birth in me of moral passion; and I declare that according to my experience moral passion is the only real passion.
    320
   
  ANN. All passions ought to be moral, Jack.
    321
   
  TANNER. Ought! Do you think that anything is strong enough to impose oughts on a passion except a stronger passion still?
    322
   
  ANN. Our moral sense controls passion, Jack. Dont be stupid.
    323
   
  TANNER. Our moral sense! And is that not a passion? Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good tunes? If it were not a passion—if it were not the mightiest of the passions, all the other passions would sweep it away like a leaf before a hurricane. It is the birth of that passion that turns a child into a man.
    324
   
  ANN. There are other passions, Jack. Very strong ones.
    325
   
  TANNER. All the other passions were in me before; but they were idle and aimless—mere childish greedinesses and cruelties, curiosities and fancies, habits and superstitions, grotesque and ridiculous to the mature intelligence. When they suddenly began to shine like newly lit flames it was by no light of their own, but by the radiance of the dawning moral passion. That passion dignified them, gave them conscience and meaning, found them a mob of appetites and organized them into an army of purposes and principles. My soul was born of that passion.
    326
   
  ANN. I noticed that you got more sense. You were a dreadfully destructive boy before that.
    327
   
  TANNER. Destructive! Stuff! I was only mischievous.
    328
   
  ANN. Oh, Jack, you were very destructive. You ruined all the young fir trees by chopping off their leaders with a wooden sword. You broke all the cucumber frames with your catapult. You set fire to the common: the police arrested Tavy for it because he ran away when he couldnt stop you. You—
    329
   
  TANNER. Pooh! pooh! pooh! these were battles, bombardments, stratagems to save our scalps from the red Indians. You have no imagination, Ann. I am ten times more destructive now than I was then. The moral passion has taken my destructiveness in hand and directed it to moral ends. I have become a reformer, and, like all reformers, an iconoclast. I no longer break cucumber frames and burn gorse bushes: I shatter creeds and demolish idols.
    330
   
  ANN [bored] I am afraid I am too feminine to see any sense in destruction. Destruction can only destroy.
    331
   
  TANNER. Yes. That is why it is so useful. Construction cumbers the ground with institutions made by busybodies. Destruction clears it and gives us breathing space and liberty.
    332
   
  ANN. It’s no use, Jack. No woman will agree with you there.
    333
   
  TANNER. Thats because you confuse construction and destruction with creation and murder. Theyre quite different: I adore creation and abhor murder. Yes: I adore it in tree and flower, in bird and beast, even in you. [A flush of interest and delight suddenly chases the growing perplexity and boredom from her face]. It was the creative instinct that led you to attach me to you by bonds that have left their mark on me to this day. Yes, Ann: the old childish compact between us was an unconscious love compact—
    334
   
  ANN. Jack!
    335
   
  TANNER. Oh, dont be alarmed—
    336
   
  ANN. I am not alarmed.
    337
   
  TANNER [whimisically] Then you ought to be: where are your principles?
    338
   
  ANN. Jack: are you serious or are you not?
    339
   
  TANNER. Do you mean about the moral passion?
    340
   
  ANN. No, no: the other one. [Confused] Oh! you are so silly: one never knows how to take you.
    341
   
  TANNER. You must take me quite seriously. I am your guardian; and it is my duty to improve your mind.
    342
   
  ANN. The love compact is over, then, is it? I suppose you grew tired of me?
    343
   
  TANNER. No; but the moral passion made our childish relations impossible. A jealous sense of my new individuality arose in me—
    344
   
  ANN. You hated to be treated as a boy any longer. Poor Jack!
    345
   
  TANNER. Yes, because to be treated as a boy was to be taken on the old footing. I had become a new person; and those who knew the old person laughed at me. The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
    346
   
  ANN. You became frightfully self-conscious.
    347
   
  TANNER. When you go to heaven, Ann, you will be frightfully conscious of your wings for the first year or so. When you meet your relatives there, and they persist in treating you as if you were still a mortal, you will not be able to bear them. You will try to get into a circle which has never known you except as an angel.
    348
   
  ANN. So it was only your vanity that made you run away from us after all?
    349
   
  TANNER. Yes, only my vanity, as you call it.
    350
   
  ANN. You need not have kept away from me on that account.
    351
   
  TANNER. From you above all others. You fought harder than anybody against my emancipation.
    352
   
  ANN [earnestly] Oh, how wrong you are! I would have done anything for you.
    353
   
  TANNER. Anything except let me get loose from you. Even then you had acquired by instinct that damnable woman’s trick of heaping obligations on a man, of placing yourself so entirely and helplessly at his mercy that at last he dare not take a step without running to you for leave. I know a poor wretch whose one desire in life is to run away from his wife. She prevents him by threatening to throw herself in front of the engine of the train he leaves her in. That is what all women do. If we try to go where you do not want us to go there is no law to prevent us; but when we take the first step your breasts are under our foot as it descends: your bodies are under our wheels as we start. No woman shall ever enslave me in that way.
    354
   
  ANN. But, Jack, you cannot get through life without considering other people a little.
    355
   
  TANNER. Ay; but what other people? It is this consideration of other people—or rather this cowardly fear of them which we call consideration—that makes us the sentimental slaves we are. To consider you, as you call it, is to substitute your will for my own. How if it be a baser will than mine? Are women taught better than men or worse? Are mobs of voters taught better than statesmen or worse? Worse, of course, in both cases. And then what sort of world are you going to get, with its public men considering its voting mobs, and its private men considering their wives? What does Church and State mean nowadays? The Woman and the Ratepayer.
    356
   
  ANN [placidly] I am so glad you understand politics, Jack: it will be most useful to you if you go into parliament [he collapses like a pricked bladder]. But I am sorry you thought my influence a bad one.
    357
   
  TANNER. I dont say it was a bad one. But bad or good, I didnt choose to be cut to your measure. And I wont be cut to it.
    358
   
  ANN. Nobody wants you to, Jack. I assure you—really on my word—I dont mind your queer opinions one little bit. You know we have all been brought up to have advanced opinions. Why do you persist in thinking me so narrow minded?
    359
   
  TANNER. Thats the danger of it. I know you dont mind, because youve found out that it doesnt matter. The boa constrictor doesnt mind the opinions of a stag one little bit when once she has got her coils round it.
    360
   
  ANN [rising in sudden enlightenment] O-o-o-o-oh! now I understand why you warned Tavy that I am a boa constrictor. Granny told me. [She laughs and throws her boa round his neck]. Doesnt it feel nice and soft, Jack?
    361
   
  TANNER [in the toils] You scandalous woman, will you throw away even your hypocrisy?
    362
   
  ANN. I am never hypocritical with you, Jack. Are you angry? [She withdraws the boa and throws it on a chair]. Perhaps I shouldnt have done that.
    363
   
  TANNER [contemptuously] Pooh, prudery! Why should you not, if it amuses you?
    364
   
  ANN [shyly] Well, because—because I suppose what you really meant by the boa constrictor was this [she puts her arms round his neck].
    365
   
  TANNER [staring at her] Magnificent audacity! [She laughs and pats his cheeks]. Now just to think that if I mentioned this episode not a soul would believe me except the people who would cut me for telling, whilst if you accused me of it nobody would believe my denial!
    366
   
  ANN [taking her arms away with perfect dignity] You are incorrigible, Jack. But you should not jest about our affection for one another. Nobody could possibly misunderstand it. You do not misunderstand it, I hope.
    367
   
  TANNER. My blood interprets for me, Ann. Poor Ricky Ticky Tavy!
    368
   
  ANN [looking quickly at him as if this were a new light] Surely you are not so absurd as to be jealous of Tavy.
    369
   
  TANNER. Jealous! Why should I be? But I dont wonder at your grip of him. I feel the coils tightening round my very self, though you are only playing with me.
    370
   
  ANN. Do you think I have designs on Tavy?
    371
   
  TANNER. I know you have.
    372
   
  ANN [earnestly] Take care, Jack. You may make Tavy very unhappy if you mislead him about me.
    373
   
  TANNER. Never fear: he will not escape you.
    374
   
  ANN. I wonder are you really a clever man!
    375
   
  TANNER. Why this sudden misgiving on the subject?
    376
   
  ANN. You seem to understand all the things I dont understand; but you are a perfect baby in the things I do understand.
    377
   
  TANNER. I understand how Tavy feels for you, Ann: you may depend on that, at all events.
    378
   
  ANN. And you think you understand how I feel for Tavy, dont you?
    379
   
  TANNER. I know only too well what is going to happen to poor Tavy.
    380
   
  ANN. I should laugh at you, Jack, if it were not for poor papa’s death. Mind! Tavy will be very unhappy.
    381
   
  TANNER. Yes; but he wont know it, poor devil. He is a thousand times too good for you. Thats why he is going to make the mistake of his life about you.
    382
   
  ANN. I think men make more mistakes by being too clever than by being too good [she sits down, with a trace of contempt for the whole male sex in the elegant carriage of her shoulders].
    383
   
  TANNER. Oh, I know you dont care very much about Tavy. But there is always one who kisses and one who only allows the kiss. Tavy will kiss; and you will only turn the cheek. And you will throw him over if anybody better turns up.
    384
   
  ANN [offended] You have no right to say such things, Jack. They are not true, and not delicate. If you and Tavy choose to be stupid about me, that is not my fault.
    385
   
  TANNER [remorsefully] Forgive my brutalities, Ann. They are levelled at this wicked world, not at you. [She looks up at him, pleased and forgiving. He becomes cautious at once]. All the same, I wish Ramsden would come back. I never feel safe with you: there is a devilish charm—or no: not a charm, a subtle interest [she laughs]—Just so: you know it; and you triumph in it. Openly and shamelessly triumph in it!
    386
   
  ANN. What a shocking flirt you are, Jack!
    387
   
  TANNER. A flirt!! I!!!
    388
   
  ANN. Yes, a flirt. You are always abusing and offending people; but you never really mean to let go your hold of them.
    389
   
  TANNER. I will ring the bell. This conversation has already gone further than I intended.
  Ramsden and Octavius come back with Miss Ramsden, a hardheaded old maiden lady in a plain brown silk gown, with enough rings, chains, and brooches to shew that her plainness of dress is a matter of principle, not of poverty. She comes into the room very determinedly: the two men, perplexed and downcast, following her. Ann rises and goes eagerly to meet her. Tanner retreats to the wall between the busts and pretends to study the pictures. Ramsden goes to his table as usual; and Octavius clings to the neighborhood of Tanner.
    390
   
  MISS RAMSDEN [almost pushing Ann aside as she comes to Mrs Whitefield’s chair and plants herself there resolutely] I wash my hands of the whole affair.
    391
   
  OCTAVIUS [very wretched] I know you wish me to take Violet away, Miss Ramsden. I will. [He turns irresolutely to the door].
    392
   
  RAMSDEN. No no—
    393
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. What is the use of saying no, Roebuck? Octavius knows that I would not turn any truly contrite and repentant woman from your doors. But when a woman is not only wicked, but intends to go on being wicked, she and I part company.
    394
   
  ANN. Oh, Miss Ramsden, what do you mean? What has Violet said?
    395
   
  RAMSDEN. Violet is certainly very obstinate. She wont leave London. I dont understand her.
    396
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. I do. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, Roebuck, that she wont go because she doesnt want to be separated from this man, whoever he is.
    397
   
  ANN. Oh, surely, surely! Octavius: did you speak to her?
    398
   
  OCTAVIUS. She wont tell us anything. She wont make any arrangement until she has consulted somebody. It cant be anybody else than the scoundrel who has betrayed her.
    399
   
  TANNER [to Octavius] Well, let her consult him. He will be glad enough to have her sent abroad. Where is the difficulty?
    400
   
  MISS RAMSDEN [taking the answer out of Octavius’s mouth] The difficulty, Mr Jack, is that when I offered to help her I didnt offer to become her accomplice in her wickedness. She either pledges her word never to see that man again, or else she finds some new friends; and the sooner the better.
  The parlormaid appears at the door. Ann hastily resumes her seat, and looks as unconcerned as possible. Octavius instinctively imitates her.
    401
   
  THE MAID. The cab is at the door, maam.
    402
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. What cab?
    403
   
  THE MAID. For Miss Robinson.
    404
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. Oh! [Recovering herself] All right. [The maid withdraws]. She has sent for a cab.
    405
   
  TANNER. I wanted to send for that cab half an hour ago.
    406
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. I am glad she understands the position she has placed herself in.
    407
   
  RAMSDEN. I dont like her going away in this fashion, Susan. We had better not do anything harsh.
    408
   
  OCTAVIUS. No: thank you again and again; but Miss Ramsden is quite right. Violet cannot expect to stay.
    409
   
  ANN. Hadnt you better go with her, Tavy?
    410
   
  OCTAVIUS. She wont have me.
    411
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. Of course she wont. She’s going straight to that man.
    412
   
  TANNER. As a natural result of her virtuous reception here.
    413
   
  RAMSDEN [much troubled] There, Susan! You hear! and theres some truth in it. I wish you could reconcile it with your principles to be a little patient with this poor girl. She’s very young; and theres a time for everything.
    414
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. Oh, she will get all the sympathy she wants from the men. I’m surprised at you, Roebuck.
    415
   
  TANNER. So am I, Ramsden, most favorably.
  Violet appears at the door. She is as impenitent and self-possessed a young lady as one would desire to see among the best behaved of her sex. Her small head and tiny resolute mouth and chin; her haughty crispness of speech and trimness of carriage; the ruthless elegance of her equipment, which includes a very smart hat with a dead bird in it, mark a personality which is as formidable as it is exquisitely pretty. She is not a siren, like Ann: admiration comes to her without any compulsion or even interest on her part; besides, there is some fun in Ann, but in this woman none, perhaps no mercy either: if anything restrains her, it is intelligence and pride, not compassion. Her voice might be the voice of a schoolmistress addressing a class of girls who had disgraced themselves, as she proceeds with complete composure and some disgust to say what she has come to say.
    416
   
  VIOLET. I have only looked in to tell Miss Ramsden that she will find her birthday present to me, the filagree bracelet, in the housekeeper’s room.
    417
   
  TANNER. Do come in, Violet; and talk to us sensibly.
    418
   
  VIOLET. Thank you: I have had quite enough of the family conversation this morning. So has your mother, Ann: she has gone home crying. But at all events, I have found out what some of my pretended friends are worth. Good bye.
    419
   
  TANNER. No, no: one moment. I have something to say which I beg you to hear. [She looks at him without the slightest curiosity, but waits, apparently as much to finish getting her glove on as to hear what he has to say]. I am altogether on your side in this matter. I congratulate you, with the sincerest respect, on having the courage to do what you have done. You are entirely in the right; and the family is entirely in the wrong.
  Sensation. Ann and Miss Ramsden rise and turn towards the two. Violet, more surprised than any of the others, forgets her glove, and comes forward into the middle of the room, both puzzled and displeased. Octavius alone does not move nor raise his head: he is overwhelmed with shame.
    420
   
  ANN [pleading to Tanner to be sensible] Jack!
    421
   
  MISS RAMSDEN [outraged] Well, I must say!
    422
   
  VIOLET [sharply to Tanner] Who told you?
    423
   
  TANNER. Why, Ramsden and Tavy of course. Why should they not?
    424
   
  VIOLET. But they dont know.
    425
   
  TANNER. Dont know what?
    426
   
  VIOLET. They dont know that I am in the right, I mean.
    427
   
  TANNER. Oh, they know it in their hearts, though they think themselves bound to blame you by their silly superstitions about morality and propriety and so forth. But I know, and the whole world really knows, though it dare not say so, that you were right to follow your instinct; that vitality and bravery are the greatest qualities a woman can have, and motherhood her solemn initiation into womanhood; and that the fact of your not being legally married matters not one scrap either to your own worth or to our real regard for you.
    428
   
  VIOLET [flushing with indignation] Oh! You think me a wicked woman, like the rest. You think I have not only been vile, but that I share your abominable opinions. Miss Ramsden: I have borne your hard words because I knew you would be sorry for them when you found out the truth. But I wont bear such a horrible insult as to be complimented by Jack on being one of the wretches of whom he approves. I have kept my marriage a secret for my husband’s sake. But now I claim my right as a married woman not to be insulted.
    429
   
  OCTAVIUS [raising his head with inexpressible relief] You are married!
    430
   
  VIOLET. Yes; and I think you might have guessed it. What business had you all to take it for granted that I had no right to wear my wedding ring? Not one of you even asked me: I cannot forget that.
    431
   
  TANNER [in ruins] I am utterly crushed. I meant well. I apologize—abjectly apologize.
    432
   
  VIOLET. I hope you will be more careful in future about the things you say. Of course one does not take them seriously; but they are very disagreeable, and rather in bad taste, I think.
    433
   
  TANNER [bowing to the storm] I have no defence: I shall know better in future than to take any woman’s part. We have all disgraced ourselves in your eyes, I am afraid, except Ann. She befriended you. For Ann’s sake, forgive us.
    434
   
  VIOLET. Yes: Ann has been kind; but then Ann knew.
    435
   
  TANNER. Oh!
    436
   
  MISS RAMSDEN [stiffly] And who, pray, is the gentleman who does not acknowledge his wife?
    437
   
  VIOLET [promptly] That is my business, Miss Ramsden, and not yours. I have my reasons for keeping my marriage a secret for the present.
    438
   
  RAMSDEN. All I can say is that we are extremely sorry, Violet. I am shocked to think of how we have treated you.
    439
   
  OCTAVIUS [awkwardly] I beg your pardon, Violet. I can say no more.
    440
   
  MISS RAMSDEN [still loth to surrender] Of course what you say puts a very different complexion on the matter. All the same, I owe it to myself—
    441
   
  VIOLET [cutting her short] You owe me an apology, Miss Ramsden: thats what you owe both to yourself and to me. If you were a married woman you would not like sitting in the housekeeper’s room and being treated like a naughty child by young girls and old ladies without any serious duties and responsibilities.
    442
   
  TANNER. Dont hit us when we’re down, Violet . We seem to have made fools of ourselves; but really it was you who made fools of us.
    443
   
  VIOLET. It was no business of yours, Jack, in any case.
    444
   
  TANNER. No business of mine! Why, Ramsden as good as accused me of being the unknown gentleman.
  Ramsden makes a frantic demonstration; but Violet’s cool keen anger extinguishes it.
    445
   
  VIOLET. You! Oh, how infamous! how abominable! how disgracefully you have all been talking about me! If my husband knew it he would never let me speak to any of you again. [To Ramsden] I think you might have spared me that, at least.
    446
   
  RAMSDEN. But I assure you I never—at least it is a monstrous perversion of something I said that—
    447
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. You neednt apologize, Roebuck. She brought it all on herself. It is for her to apologize for having deceived us.
    448
   
  VIOLET. I can make allowances for you, Miss Ramsden: you cannot understand how I feel on this subject, though I should have expected rather better taste from people of greater experience. However, I quite feel that you have placed yourselves in a very painful position; and the most truly considerate thing for me to do is to go at once. Good morning.
  She goes, leaving them staring.
    449
   
  MISS RAMSDEN. Well, I must say!
    450
   
  RAMSDEN [plaintively] I dont think she is quite fair to us.
    451
   
  TANNER. You must cower before the wedding ring like the rest of us, Ramsden. The cup of our ignominy is full.

Act II
   
    
On the carriage drive in the park of a country house near Richmond an open touring car has broken down. It stands in front of a clump of trees round which the drive sweeps to the house, which is partly visible through them: indeed Tanner, standing in the drive with his back to us, could get an unobstructed view of the west corner of the house on his left were he not far too much interested in a pair of supine legs in dungaree overalls which protrude from beneath the machine. He is watching them intently with bent back and hands supported on his knees. His leathern overcoat and peaked cap proclaim him one of the dismounted passengers.
      1
   
  THE LEGS. Aha! I got him.
      2
   
  TANNER. All right now?
      3
   
  THE LEGS. Aw right now.
  Tanner stoops and takes the legs by the ankles, drawing their owner forth like a wheelbarrow, walking on his hands, with a hammer in his mouth. He is a young man in a neat suit of blue serge, clean shaven, dark eyed, square fingered, with short well brushed black hair and rather irregular sceptically turned eye-brows. When he is manipulating the car his movements are swift and sudden, yet attentive and deliberate. With Tanner and Tanner’s friends his manner is not in the least deferential, but cool and reticent, keeping them quite effectually at a distance whilst giving them no excuse for complaining of him. Nevertheless he has a vigilant eye on them always, and that, too, rather cynically, like a man who knows the world well from its seamy side. He speaks slowly and with a touch of sarcasm; and as he does not at all affect the gentleman in his speech, it may be inferred that his smart appearance is a mark of respect to himself and his own class, not to that which employs him.
  He now gets into the car to stow away his tools and divest himself of his overalls. Tanner takes off his leathern overcoat and pitches it into the car with a sigh of relief, glad to be rid of it. The Chauffeur, noting this, tosses his head contemptuously, and surveys his employer sardonically.
      4
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR. Had enough of it, eh?
      5
   
  TANNER. I may as well walk to the house and stretch my legs and calm my nerves a little. [Looking at his watch] I suppose you know that we have come from Hyde Park Corner to Richmond in twenty-one minutes.
      6
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR. I’d ha done it under fifteen if I’d had a clear road all the way.
      7
   
  TANNER. Why do you do it? Is it for love of sport or for the fun of terrifying your unfortunate employer?
      8
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR. What are you afraid of?
      9
   
  TANNER. The police, and breaking my neck.
     10
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR. Well, if you like easy going, you can take a bus, you know. It’s cheaper. You pay me to save your time and give you the value of what you paid for the car. [He sits down calmly].
     11
   
  TANNER. I am the slave of that car and of you too. I dream of the accursed thing at night.
     12
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR. Youll get over that all right. If youre going up to the house, may I ask how long youre goin to stay? Because if you mean to put in the whole morning in there talkin to the ladies, I’ll put the car in the garage and make myself agreeable with a view to lunching here. If not, I’ll keep the car on the go about here til you come.
     13
   
  TANNER. Better wait here. We shant be long. Theres a young American gentleman, a Mr Malone, who is driving Mr Robinson down in his new American steam car.
     14
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR [springing up and coming hastily out of the car to Tanner] American steam car! Wot! racin us dahn from London!
     15
   
  TANNER. Perhaps theyre here already.
     16
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR. If I’d known it! [With deep reproach] Why didnt you tell me, Mr Tanner?
     17
   
  TANNER. Because Ive been told that this car is capable of 84 miles an hour; and I already know what you are capable of when there is a rival car on the road. No, Henry: there are things it is not good for you to know; and this was one of them. However, cheer up: we are going to have a day after your own heart. The American is to take Mr Robinson and his sister and Miss Whitefield. We are to take Miss Rhoda.
     18
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR [consoled and musing on another matter] Thats Miss Whitefield’s sister, isnt it?
     19
   
  TANNER. Yes.
     20
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR. And Miss Whitefield herself is goin in the other car? Not with you?
     21
   
  TANNER. Why the devil should she come with me? Mr Robinson will be in the other car. [The Chauffeur looks at Tanner with cool incredulity, and turns to the car, whistling a popular air softly to himself. Tanner, a little annoyed, is about to pursue the subject when he hears the footsteps of Octavius on the gravel. Octavius is coming from the house, dressed for motoring, but without his overcoat]. Weve lost the race, thank heaven: heres Mr Robinson. Well, Tavy, is the steam car a success?
     22
   
  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?
     23
   
  TANNER. Oh, about three quarters of an hour or so.
     24
   
  THE CHAUFFEUR [remonstrating] Now, now, Mr Tanner, come now! We could ha done it easy under fifteen.
     25
   
  TANNER. By the way, let me introduce you. Mr Octavius Robinson: Mr Enry Straker.
     26
   
  STRAKER. Pleased to meet you, sir. Mr Tanner is gittin at you with is Enry Straker, you know. You call it Henery. But I dont mind, bless you.
     27
   
  TANNER. You think it’s simply bad taste in me to chaff him, Tavy. But youre wrong. This man takes more trouble to drop his aitches 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.
     28
   
  STRAKER. Easy, easy! A little moderation, Mr Tanner.
     29
   
  TANNER. A little moderation, Tavy, you observe. You would tell me to draw it mild. But this chap has been educated. Whats more, he knows that we havnt. What was that Board School of yours, Straker?
     30
   
  STRAKER. Sherbrooke Road.
     31
   
  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 school-fellow.
     32
   
  STRAKER. You dont know nothing about it, Mr Tanner. It’s not the Board School that does it: it’s the Polytechnic.
     33
   
  TANNER. His university, Octavius. Not Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Dublin, or Glasgow. Not even those Non-conformist holes in Wales. No, Tavy. Regent Street! Chelsea! the Borough!—I dont know half their confounded names: these are his universities, not mere shops for selling class limitations like ours. You despise Oxford, Enry, dont you?
     34
   
  STRAKER. No, I dont. 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?
     35
   
  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.
     36
   
  STRAKER. Never you mind him, Mr Robinson. He likes to talk. We know him, dont we?
     37
   
  OCTAVIUS [earnestly] But theres a great truth at the bottom of what he says. I believe most intensely in the dignity of labor.
     38
   
  STRAKER [unimpressed] Thats because you never done any, Mr Robinson. My business is to do away with labor. Youll get more out of me and a machine than you will out of twenty laborers, and not so much to drink either.
     39
   
  TANNER. For heaven’s sake, Tavy, dont start him on political economy. He knows all about it; and we dont. Youre only a poetic Socialist, Tavy: he’s a scientific one.
     40
   
  STRAKER [unperturbed] Yes. Well, this conversation is very improvin; but Ive 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].
     41
   
  TANNER. Thats a very momentous social phenomenon.
     42
   
  OCTAVIUS. What is?
     43
   
  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.
     44
   
  OCTAVIUS. I see nothing new about him, except your way of chaffing him. But I dont want to talk about him just now. I want to speak to you about Ann.
     45
   
  TANNER. Straker knew even that. He learnt it at the Polytechnic, probably. Well, what about Ann? Have you proposed to her?
     46
   
  OCTAVIUS [self-reproachfully] I was brute enough to do so last night.
     47
   
  TANNER. Brute enough! What do you mean?
     48
   
  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!
     49
   
  TANNER. Done what, you maudlin idiot?
     50
   
  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.
     51
   
  TANNER. Tears! thats dangerous. What did she say?
     52
   
  OCTAVIUS. She asked me how she could think of anything now but her dear father. She stifled a sob—[he breaks down].
     53
   
  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.
     54
   
  OCTAVIUS [impatiently] Oh, dont be a fool, Jack. Do you suppose this eternal shallow cynicism of yours has any real bearing on a nature like hers?
     55
   
  TANNER. Hm! Did she say anything else?
     56
   
  OCTAVIUS. Yes; and that is why I expose myself and her to your ridicule by telling you what passed.
     57
   
  TANNER [remorsefully] No, dear Tavy, not ridicule, on my honor! However, no matter. Go on.
     58
   
  OCTAVIUS. Her sense of duty is so devout, so perfect, so —
     59
   
  TANNER. Yes: I know. Go on.
     60
   
  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.
     61
   
  TANNER. I am glad that love has not totally extinguished your sense of humor, Tavy.
     62
   
  OCTAVIUS. That answer wont satisfy her.
     63
   
  TANNER. My official answer is, obviously, Bless you, my children: may you be happy!
     64
   
  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.
     65
   
  TANNER. You know very well that she is as free to choose as you are.
     66
   
  OCTAVIUS. She does not think so.
     67
   
  TANNER. Oh, doesnt she! just! However, say what you want me to do?
     68
   
  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.
     69
   
  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?
     70
   
  OCTAVIUS [keeping his temper with difficulty] I am not discussing literature at present.
     71
   
  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.
     72
   
  OCTAVIUS. I wish I could believe that, vilely as you put it.
     73
   
  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.
     74
   
  OCTAVIUS. I cannot write without inspiration. And nobody can give me that except Ann.
     75
   
  TANNER. Well, hadnt you better get it from her at a safe distance? Petrarch didnt 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 Im 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 youll find no more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.
     76
   
  OCTAVIUS. You think I shall tire of her!
     77
   
  TANNER. Not at all: you dont get tired of muffins. But you dont find inspiration in them; and you wont in her when she ceases to be a poet’s dream and becomes a solid eleven stone wife. Youll be forced to dream about somebody else; and then there will be a row.
     78
   
  OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is no use, Jack. You dont understand. You have never been in love.
     79
   
  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.
     80
   
  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.
     81
   
  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.
     82
   
  OCTAVIUS. I beg you not to say anything like that to Ann.
     83
   
  TANNER. Dont 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.
     84
   
  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.
     85
   
  OCTAVIUS. Are there no winners in the Times?
     86
   
  TANNER. Enry dont old with bettin, Tavy. Motor records are his weakness. Whats the latest?
     87
   
  STRAKER. Paris to Biskra at forty mile an hour average, not countin the Mediterranean.
     88
   
  TANNER. How many killed?
     89
   
  STRAKER. Two silly sheep. What does it matter? Sheep dont 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, therell be a clamor agin it presently; and then the French Government’ll stop it; an our chance’ll be gone, see? Thats what makes me fairly mad: Mr Tanner wont do a good run while he can.
     90
   
  TANNER. Tavy: do you remember my uncle James?
     91
   
  OCTAVIUS. Yes. Why?
     92
   
  TANNER. Uncle James had a first rate cook: he couldnt 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 dont 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.
     93
   
  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 dont git the last inch out of us both.
     94
   
  TANNER [soothingly] All right, Henry, all right. We’ll go out for half an hour presently.
     95
   
  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].
     96
   
  OCTAVIUS. Oh, that reminds me. I have a note for you from Rhoda. [He gives Tanner a note].
     97
   
  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 eldest sister; and thats her mother. But Rhoda positively prefers her mother to Ann. She—[indignantly] Oh, I say!
     98
   
  OCTAVIUS. Whats the matter?
     99
   
  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.
    100
   
  OCTAVIUS [recovering himself] Does she give any reason?
    101
   
  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?
    102
   
  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.
    103
   
  TANNER [staring at him] In short, you agree with Ann.
    104
   
  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.
    105
   
  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.
    106
   
  OCTAVIUS. Ann doesnt say that, Jack.
    107
   
  TANNER. What else does she mean?
    108
   
  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].
    109
   
  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!
    110
   
  TANNER. What do you say now, Tavy?
    111
   
  OCTAVIUS. Surely you cannot misunderstand, Jack. Ann is shewing you the kindest consideration, even at the cost of deceiving you.
    112
   
  ANN. What do you mean?
    113
   
  TANNER. Would you like to cure Rhoda’s headache, Ann?
    114
   
  ANN. Of course.
    115
   
  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!
    116
   
  ANN. Rhoda has written to you!
    117
   
  TANNER. With full particulars.
    118
   
  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.
    119
   
  ANN [going to Octavius] How kind you are, Tavy! How helpful! How well you understand!
  Octavius beams.
    120
   
  TANNER. Ay: tighten the coils. You love her, Tavy, dont you?
    121
   
  OCTAVIUS. She knows I do.
    122
   
  ANN. Hush. For shame, Tavy!
    123
   
  TANNER. Oh, I give you leave. I am your guardian; and I commit you to Tavy’s care for the next hour. I am off for a turn in the car.
    124
   
  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.
    125
   
  OCTAVIUS. I fly, dearest Ann [he kisses her hand].
    126
   
  ANN [tenderly] Ricky Ticky Tavy!
  He looks at her with an eloquent blush, and runs off.
    127
   
  TANNER [bluntly] Now look here, Ann. This time youve 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.
    128
   
  ANN. You misunderstand, Jack. I didnt dare tell Tavy the truth.
    129
   
  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?
    130
   
  ANN. I know you are incapable of behaving badly—
    131
   
  TANNER. Then why did you lie to her?
    132
   
  ANN. I had to.
    133
   
  TANNER. Had to!
    134
   
  ANN. Mother made me.
    135
   
  TANNER [his eye flashing] Ha! I might have known it. The mother! Always the mother!
    136
   
  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 in 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?
    137
   
  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.
    138
   
  ANN. I love my mother, Jack.
    139
   
  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.
    140
   
  ANN [watching him with quiet curiosity] I suppose you will go in seriously for politics some day, Jack.
    141
   
  TANNER [heavily let down] Eh? What? Wh—? [Collecting his scattered wits] What has that got to do with what I have been saying?
    142
   
  ANN. You talk so well.
    143
   
  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.
    144
   
  ANN. I am getting on. Yesterday I was a boa constrictor: to-day I am an elephant.
    145
   
  TANNER. Yes. So pack your trunk and begone: I have no more to say to you.
    146
   
  ANN. You are so utterly unreasonable and impracticable. What can I do?
    147
   
  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.
    148
   
  ANN [thoughtfully] I dont 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.
    149
   
  TANNER [aghast] Youll come!!!
    150
   
  ANN. Of course.
    151
   
  TANNER. But—[he stops, utterly appalled; then resumes feebly] No: look here, Ann: if theres no harm in it theres no point in doing it.
    152
   
  ANN. How absurd you are! You dont want to compromise me, do you?
    153
   
  TANNER. Yes: thats the whole sense of my proposal.
    154
   
  ANN. You are talking the greatest nonsense; and you know it. You would never do anything to hurt me.
    155
   
  TANNER. Well, if you dont want to be compromised, dont come.
    156
   
  ANN [with simple earnestness] Yes, I will come, Jack, since you wish it. You are my guardian; and I 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?
    157
   
  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 perhaps 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 shew a want of respect for womanhood; English pronunciation to fail very vulgarly in tackling such words as world, girl, bird, &c.; 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 pains 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 irreverence, to leave 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 as 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. Isnt it lovely? I am the happiest person in London.
    159
   
  TANNER [desperately] Mrs Whitefield objects. I am sure she objects. Doesnt she, Ramsden?
    160
   
  RAMSDEN. I should think it very likely indeed.
    161
   
  ANN. You dont object, do you, Mother?
    162
   
  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.
    163
   
  TANNER. Abyss beneath abyss of perfidy!
    164
   
  ANN [hastily, to distract attention from this outburst] Oh, I forgot: you have not met Mr Malone. Mr Tanner, my guardian: Mr Hector Malone.
    165
   
  HECTOR. Pleased to meet you, Mr Tanner. I should like to suggest an extension of the travelling party to Nice, if I may.
    166
   
  ANN. Oh, we’re all coming. Thats understood, isnt it?
    167
   
  HECTOR. I also am the mawdest possessor of a motor car. If Miss Rawbnsn will allow me the privilege of taking her, my car is at her service.
    168
   
  OCTAVIUS. Violet!
  General constraint.
    169
   
  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.
    170
   
  HECTOR. I think I may go so far as to say that I can depend on Miss Rawbnsn’s consent.
  Continued embarrassment.
    171
   
  OCTAVIUS. I’m afraid we must leave Violet behind. There are circumstances which make it impossible for her to come on such an expedition.
    172
   
  HECTOR [amused and not at all convinced] Too American, eh? Must the young lady have a chaperone?
    173
   
  OCTAVIUS. It’s not that, Malone—at least not altogether.
    174
   
  HECTOR. Indeed! May I ask what other objection applies?
    175
   
  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.
    176
   
  HECTOR [thunderstruck] You dont tell me so!
    177
   
  TANNER. We do. In confidence.
    178
   
  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.
    179
   
  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 cawnsulting him about this trip?
    180
   
  TANNER. We dont know who he is.
    181
   
  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.
    182
   
  OCTAVIUS. You must think this very strange.
    183
   
  HECTOR. A little singular. Pardn mee for saying so.
    184
   
  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.
    185
   
  OCTAVIUS [sympathetically] I hope this is not a disappointment to you.
    186
   
  HECTOR [softened, coming out of his shell again] Well: it is a blow. I can hardly understand how a man can leave his wife in such a position. Surely it’s not custoMary. It’s not manly. It’s not considerate.
    187
   
  OCTAVIUS. We feel that, as you may imagine, pretty deeply.
    188
   
  RAMSDEN [testily] It is some young fool who has not enough experience to know what mystifications of this kind lead to.
    189
   
  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.
    190
   
  TANNER [sardonically] Ha!
    191
   
  HECTOR. Am I to gather from that cacchination that you dont agree with me, Mr Tanner?
    192
   
  TANNER [drily] Get married and try. You may find it delightful for a while: you certainly wont find it ennobling. The greatest common measure of a man and a woman is not necessarily greater than the man’s single measure.
    193
   
  HECTOR. Well, we think in America that a woman’s morl 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.
    194
   
  OCTAVIUS [with conviction] So it does.
    195
   
  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 whats to be done?
    196
   
  HECTOR [shaking his head] I cant dismiss that man’s cawnduct as lightly as you do, Mr Tanner. However, I’ll say no more. Whoever he is, he’s Miss Rawbnsn’s husband; and I should be glad for her sake to think better of him.
    197
   
  OCTAVIUS [touched; for he divines a secret sorrow] I’m very sorry, Malone. Very sorry.
    198
   
  HECTOR [gratefully] Youre a good fellow, Rawbnsn. Thank you.
    199
   
  TANNER. Talk about something else. Violet’s coming from the house.
    200
   
  HECTOR. I should esteem it a very great favor, gentlemen, 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 dullicate—
    201
   
  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.
    202
   
  VIOLET. Are they looking?
    203
   
  HECTOR. No.
  She kisses him.
    204
   
  VIOLET. Have you been telling lies for my sake?
    205
   
  HECTOR. Lying! Lying hardly describes it. I overdo it. I get carried away in an ecstasy of mendacity. Violet: I wish youd let me own up.
    206
   
  VIOLET [instantly becoming serious and resolute] No, no, Hector: you promised me not to.
    207
   
  HECTOR. I’ll keep my prawmis until you release me from it. But I feel mean, lying to those men, and denying my wife. Just dastardly.
    208
   
  VIOLET. I wish your father were not so unreasonable.
    209
   
  HECTOR. Hes not unreasonable. Hes right from his point of view. He has a prejudice against the English middle class.
    210
   
  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.
    211
   
  HECTOR. I know. If you were to marry the son of an English manufacturer of awffice furniture, your friends would consider it a misalliance. And here’s my silly old dad, who is the biggest awffice furniture man in the world, would shew 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 dont like deceiving him. I feel as if I was stealing his money. Why wont you let me own up?
    212
   
  VIOLET. We cant afford it. You can be as romantic as you please about love, Hector; but you mustnt be romantic about money.
    213
   
  HECTOR [divided between his uxoriousness and his habitual elevation of moral sentiment] Thats very English. [Appealing to her impulsively] Violet: dad’s bound to find us out someday.
    214
   
  VIOLET. Oh yes, later on of course. But dont lets go over this everytime we meet, dear. You promised—
    215
   
  HECTOR. All right, all right, I—
    216
   
  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.
    217
   
  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.
    218
   
  VIOLET [alarmed and indignant] Do you mean to work? Do you want to spoil our marriage?
    219
   
  HECTOR. Well, I dont mean to let marriage spoil my character. Your friend Mr Tanner has got the laugh on me a bit already about that; and—
    220
   
  VIOLET. The beast! I hate Jack Tanner.
    221
   
  HECTOR [magnanimously] Oh, hes 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.
    222
   
  VIOLET. How jolly!
    223
   
  HECTOR. Yes; but how are we going to manage? You see, theyve warned me off going with you, so to speak. Theyve told me in cawnfidnce that youre married. Thats just the most overwhelming cawnfidnce Ive ever been honored with.
  Tanner returns with Straker, who goes to his car.
    224
   
  TANNER. Your car is a great success, Mr Malone. Your engineer is showing it off to Mr Ramsden.
    225
   
  HECTOR [eagerly—forgetting himself] Lets come, Vi.
    226
   
  VIOLET [coldly, warning him with her eyes] I beg your pardon, Mr Malone: I did not quite catch—
    227
   
  HECTOR [recollecting himself] I ask to be allowed the pleasure of shewing you my little American steam car, Miss Rawbnsn.
    228
   
  VIOLET. I shall be very pleased. [They go off together down the avenue].
    229
   
  TANNER. About this trip, Straker.
    230
   
  STRAKER [preoccupied with the car] Yes?
    231
   
  TANNER. Miss Whitefield is supposed to be coming with me.
    232
   
  STRAKER. So I gather.
    233
   
  TANNER. Mr Robinson is to be one of the party.
    234
   
  STRAKER. Yes.
    235
   
  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.
    236
   
  STRAKER [looking round at him] Evidently.
    237
   
  TANNER. “Evidently”! Your grandfather would have simply winked.
    238
   
  STRAKER. My grandfather would have touched his at.
    239
   
  TANNER. And I should have given your good nice respectful grandfather a sovereign.
    240
   
  STRAKER. Five shillins, more likely. [He leaves the car and approaches Tanner]. What about the lady’s views?
    241
   
  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.
    242
   
  STRAKER [obstinately] It’s not a bit o use. Mr Robinson may as well give it up first as last.
    243
   
  TANNER. Why?
    244
   
  STRAKER. Garn! You know why. Course it’s not my business; but you neednt start kiddin me about it.
    245
   
  TANNER. I am not kidding. I dont know why.
    246
   
  STRAKER [cheerfully sulky] Oh, very well. All right. It aint my business.
    247
   
  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 dont abuse your advantages. Let me remind you that Voltaire said that what was too silly to be said could be sung.
    248
   
  STRAKER. It wasnt Voltaire: it was Bow Mar Shay.
    249
   
  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! theres 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?
    250
   
  STRAKER. Cause shes arter summun else.
    251
   
  TANNER. Bosh! who else?
    252
   
  STRAKER. You.
    253
   
  TANNER. Me!!!
    254
   
  STRAKER. Mean to tell me you didnt know? Oh, come, Mr Tanner!
    255
   
  TANNER [in fierce earnest] Are you playing the fool, or do you mean it?
    256
   
  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 aint spotted that, you dont 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.
    257
   
  TANNER [wildly appealing to the heavens] Then I—I am the bee, the spider, the marked down victim, the destined prey.
    258
   
  STRAKER. I dunno about the bee and the spider. But the marked down victim, thats what you are and no mistake; and a jolly good job for you, too, I should say.
    259
   
  TANNER [momentously] Henry Straker: the golden moment of your life has arrived.
    260
   
  STRAKER. What d’y’mean?
    261
   
  TANNER. That record to Biskra.
    262
   
  STRAKER [eagerly] Yes?
    263
   
  TANNER. Break it.
    264
   
  STRAKER [rising to the height of his destiny] D’y’mean it?
    265
   
  TANNER. I do.
    266
   
  STRAKER. When?
    267
   
  TANNER. Now. Is that machine ready to start?
    268
   
  STRAKER [quailing] But you cant—
    269
   
  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.
    270
   
  STRAKER. Garn! youre kiddin.
    271
   
  TANNER [resolutely] Stay behind then. If you wont come I’ll do it alone. [He starts the motor].
    272
   
  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.
      1
   
  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 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 ease 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 hand of tramps and ablebodied paupers.
      2
   
  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 for 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 sooner 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.
      3
   
  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 he 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, far-sighted 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 not 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 ablebodied, ableminded 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.
      4
   
  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 then 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.
      5
   
  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 patty 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 unmistakeable 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.)
      6
   
  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 cuffs 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.
      7
   
  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 shews that he is a favorite orator.
      8
   
  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 doesnt know what Anarchism means [laughter]—
      9
   
  THE ANARCHIST [rising] A point of order, Mendoza—
     10
   
  MENDOZA [forcibly] No, by thunder: your last point of order took half an hour. Besides, Anarchists dont believe in order.
     11
   
  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—
     12
   
  MENDOZA. Order, order.
     13
   
  THE OTHERS [shouting] Order, order. Sit down. Chair! Shut up.
  The Anarchist is suppressed.
     14
   
  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.
     15
   
  THE THREE MEN IN SCARLET TIES. 1. Mr Chairman, I protest. A personal explanation. 2. It’s a lie. I never said so. Be fair, Mendoza. 3. Je demande la parole. C’est absolument faux. C’est faux! faux!! faux!!! Assas-s-s-s-sin!!!!!!
     16
   
  MENDOZA. Order, order.
     17
   
  THE OTHERS. Order, order, order! Chair!
  The Social-Democrats are suppressed.
     18
   
  MENDOZA. Now, we tolerate all opinions here. But after all, comrades, the vast majority of us are neither Anarchists nor Socialists, but gentlemen and Christians.
     19
   
  THE MAJORITY [shouting assent] Hear, hear! So we are. Right.
     20
   
  THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [smarting under suppression] You aint no Christian. Youre a Sheeny, you are.
     21
   
  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, &c.]. 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.
     22
   
  THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!
     23
   
  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.
     24
   
  THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. All made by labor, mind you.
     25
   
  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.
     26
   
  THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [stubbornly] No more aint we.
     27
   
  MENDOZA [indignantly] Have I taken more than my share?
     28
   
  THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [unmoved] Why should you?
     29
   
  THE ANARCHIST. Why should he not? To each according to his needs: from each according to his means.
     30
   
  THE FRENCHMAN [shaking his fist at the Anarchist] Fumiste!
     31
   
  MENDOZA [diplomatically] I agree with both of you.
     32
   
  THE GENUINELY ENGLISH BRIGANDS. Hear, hear! Bravo Mendoza!
     33
   
  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.
     34
   
  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.
     35
   
  THE GOATHERD. Automobile! Automobile! [He rushes down the hill and joins the rest, who all scramble to their feet].
     36
   
  MENDOZA [in ringing tones] To arms! Who has the gun?
     37
   
  THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [handing the rifle to Mendoza] Here.
     38
   
  MENDOZA. Have the nails been strewn in the road?
     39
   
  THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Two ahnces of em.
     40
   
  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].
     41
   
  MENDOZA [on the hill, using his glass] Two only, a capitalist and his chauffeur. They look English.
     42
   
  DUVAL. Angliche! Aoh yess. Cochons! [Handling the rifle] Faut tirer, n’est-ce-pas?
     43
   
  MENDOZA. No: the nails have gone home. Their tire is down: they stop.
     44
   
  DUVAL [shouting to the others] Fondez sur eux, nom de Dieu!
     45
   
  MENDOZA [rebuking his excitement] Du calme, Duval: keep your hair on. They take it quietly. Let us descend and receive them.
  Mendoza descends, passing behind the fire and coming forward, whilst Tanner and Straker, in their motoring goggles, leather coats, and caps, are led in from the road by the brigands.
     46
   
  TANNER. Is this the gentleman you describe as your boss? Does he speak English?
     47
   
  THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Course he does. Y’ downt suppowz we Hinglishmen luts ahrselves be bossed by a bloomin Spenniard, do you?
     48
   
  MENDOZA [with dignity] Allow me to introduce myself. Mendoza, President of the League of the Sierra! [Posing loftily] I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.
     49
   
  TANNER [promptly] I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.
     50
   
  THE ENGLISH SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!
  General laughter and good humor. Tanner and Mendoza shake hands. The Brigands drop into their former places.
     51
   
  STRAKER. Ere! where do I come in?
     52
   
  TANNER [introducing] My friend and chauffeur.
     53
   
  THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [suspiciously] Well, which is he? friend or show-foor? It makes all the difference, you know.
     54
   
  MENDOZA [explaining] We should expect ransom for a friend. A professional chauffeur is free of the mountains. He even takes a trifling percentage of his principal’s ransom if he will honor us by accepting it.
     55
   
  STRAKER. I see. Just to encourage me to come this way again. Well, I’ll think about it.
     56
   
  DUVAL [impulsively rushing across to Straker] Mon frère! [He embraces him rapturously and kisses him on both cheeks].
     57
   
  STRAKER [disgusted] Ere, git out: dont be silly. Who are you, pray?
     58
   
  DUVAL. Duval: Social-Democrat.
     59
   
  STRAKER. Oh, youre a Social-Democrat, are you?
     60
   
  THE ANARCHIST. He means that he has sold out to the parliamentary humbugs and the bourgeoisie. Compromise! that is his faith.
     61
   
  DUVAL [furiously] I understand what he say. He say Bourgeois. He say Compromise. Jamais de la vie! Misérable menteur—
     62
   
  STRAKER. See here, Captain Mendoza, ow much o this sort o thing do you put up with here? Are we avin a pleasure trip in the mountains, or are we at a Socialist meetin?
     63
   
  THE MAJORITY. Hear, hear! Shut up. Chuck it. Sit down, &c., &c. [The Social-Democrats and the Anarchist are hustled into the background. Straker, after superintending this proceeding with satisfaction, places himself on Mendoza’s left, Tanner being on his right].
     64
   
  MENDOZA. Can we offer you anything? Broiled rabbit and prickly pears—
     65
   
  TANNER. Thank you: we have dined.
     66
   
  MENDOZA [to his followers] Gentlemen: business is over for the day. Go as you please until morning.
  The Brigands disperse into groups lazily. Some go into the cave. Others sit down or lie down to sleep in the open. A few produce a pack of cards and move off towards the road; for it is now starlight; and they know that motor cars have lamps which can be turned to account for lighting a card party.
     67
   
  STRAKER [calling after them] Dont none of you go fooling with that car, d’ye hear?
     68
   
  MENDOZA. No fear, Monsieur le Chauffeur. The first one we captured cured us of that.
     69
   
  STRAKER [interested] What did it do?
     70
   
  MENDOZA. It carried three brave comrades of ours, who did not know how to stop it, into Granada, and capsized them opposite the police station. Since then we never touch one without sending for the chauffeur. Shall we chat at our ease?
     71
   
  TANNER. By all means.
  Tanner, Mendoza, and Straker sit down on the turf by the fire. Mendoza delicately waives his presidential dignity, of which the right to sit on the squared stone block is the appanage, by sitting on the ground like his guests, and using the stone only as a support for his back.
     72
   
  MENDOZA. It is the custom in Spain always to put off business until to-morrow. In fact, you have arrived out of office hours. However, if you would prefer to settle the question of ransom at once, I am at your service.
     73
   
  TANNER. To-morrow will do for me. I am rich enough to pay anything in reason.
     74
   
  MENDOZA [respectfully, much struck by this admission] You are a remarkable man, sir. Our guests usually describe themselves as miserably poor.
     75
   
  TANNER. Pooh! Miserably poor people dont own motor cars.
     76
   
  MENDOZA. Precisely what we say to them.
     77
   
  TANNER. Treat us well: we shall not prove ungrateful.
     78
   
  STRAKER. No prickly pears and broiled rabbits, you know. Dont tell me you cant do us a bit better than that if you like.
     79
   
  MENDOZA. Wine, kids, milk, cheese, and bread can be procured for ready money.
     80
   
  STRAKER [graciously] Now youre talkin.
     81
   
  TANNER. Are you all Socialists here, may I ask?
     82
   
  MENDOZA [repudiating this humiliating misconception] Oh no, no, no: nothing of the kind, I assure you. We naturally have modern views as to the injustice of the existing distribution of wealth: otherwise we should lose our self-respect. But nothing that you could take exception to, except two or three faddists.
     83
   
  TANNER. I had no intention of suggesting anything discreditable. In fact, I am a bit of a Socialist myself.
     84
   
  STRAKER [drily] Most rich men are, I notice.
     85
   
  MENDOZA. Quite so. It has reached us, I admit. It is in the air of the century.
     86
   
  STRAKER. Socialism must be lookin up a bit if your chaps are taking to it.
     87
   
  MENDOZA. That is true, sir. A movement which is confined to philosophers and honest men can never exercise any real political influence: there are too few of them. Until a movement shews itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never hope for a political majority.
     88
   
  TANNER. But are your brigands any less honest than ordinary citizens?
     89
   
  MENDOZA. Sir: I will be frank with you. Brigandage is abnormal. Abnormal professions attract two classes: those who are not good enough for ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good for it. We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum very superior.
     90
   
  STRAKER. Take care! some o the dregs’ll hear you.
     91
   
  MENDOZA. It does not matter: each brigand thinks himself scum, and likes to hear the others called dregs.
     92
   
  TANNER. Come! you are a wit. [Mendoza inclines his head, flattered]. May one ask you a blunt question?
     93
   
  MENDOZA. As blunt as you please.
     94
   
  TANNER. How does it pay a man of your talent to shepherd such a flock as this on broiled rabbit and prickly pears? I have seen men less gifted, and I’ll swear less honest, supping at the Savoy on foie gras and champagne.
     95
   
  MENDOZA. Pooh! they have all had their turn at the broiled rabbit, just as I shall have my turn at the Savoy. Indeed, I have had a turn there already—as waiter.
     96
   
  TANNER. A waiter! You astonish me!
     97
   
  MENDOZA [reflectively] Yes: I, Mendoza of the Sierra, was a waiter. Hence, perhaps, my cosmopolitanism. [With sudden intensity] Shall I tell you the story of my life?
     98
   
  STRAKER [apprehensively] If it aint too long, old chap—
     99
   
  TANNER [interrupting him] Tsh-sh: you are a Philistine, Henry: you have no romance in you. [To Mendoza] You interest me extremely, President. Never mind Henry: he can go to sleep.
    100
   
  MENDOZA. The woman I loved—
    101
   
  STRAKER. Oh, this is a love story, is it? Right you are. Go on: I was only afraid you were going to talk about yourself.
    102
   
  MENDOZA. Myself! I have thrown myself away for her sake: that is why I am here. No matter: I count the world well lost for her. She had, I pledge you my word, the most magnificent head of hair I ever saw. She had humor; she had intellect; she could cook to perfection; and her highly strung temperament made her uncertain, incalculable, variable, capricious, cruel, in a word, enchanting.
    103
   
  STRAKER. A six shillin novel sort o woman, all but the cookin. Er name was Lady Gladys Plantagenet, wasnt it?
    104
   
  MENDOZA. No, sir: she was not an earl’s daughter. Photography, reproduced by the half-tone process, has made me familiar with the appearance of the daughters of the English peerage; and I can honestly say that I would have sold the lot, faces, dowries, clothes, titles, and all, for a smile from this woman. Yet she was a woman of the people, a worker: otherwise—let me reciprocate your bluntness—I should have scorned her.
    105
   
  TANNER. Very properly. And did she respond to your love?
    106
   
  MENDOZA. Should I be here if she did? She objected to marry a Jew.
    107
   
  TANNER. On religious grounds?
    108
   
  MENDOZA. No: she was a freethinker. She said that every Jew considers in his heart that English people are dirty in their habits.
    109
   
  TANNER [surprised] Dirty!
    110
   
  MENDOZA. It shewed her extraordinary knowledge of the world; for it is undoubtedly true. Our elaborate sanitary code makes us unduly contemptuous of the Gentile.
    111
   
  TANNER. Did you ever hear that, Henry?
    112
   
  STRAKER. Ive heard my sister say so. She was cook in a Jewish family once.
    113
   
  MENDOZA. I could not deny it; neither could I eradicate the impression it made on her mind. I could have got round any other objection; but no woman can stand a suspicion of indelicacy as to her person. My entreaties were in vain: she always retorted that she wasnt good enough for me, and recommended me to marry an accursed barmaid named Rebecca Lazarus, whom I loathed. I talked of suicide: she offered me a packet of beetle poison to do it with. I hinted at murder: she went into hysterics; and as I am a living man I went to America so that she might sleep without dreaming that I was stealing upstairs to cut her throat. In America I went out west and fell in with a man who was wanted by the police for holding up trains. It was he who had the idea of holding up motor cars in the South of Europe: a welcome idea to a desperate and disappointed man. He gave me some valuable introductions to capitalists of the right sort. I formed a syndicate; and the present enterprise is the result. I became leader, as the Jew always becomes leader, by his brains and imagination. But with all my pride of race I would give everything I possess to be an Englishman. I am like a boy: I cut her name on the trees and her initials on the sod. When I am alone I lie down and tear my wretched hair and cry Louisa—
    114
   
  STRAKER [startled] Louisa!
    115
   
  MENDOZA. It is her name—Louisa—Louisa Straker—
    116
   
  TANNER. Straker!
    117
   
  STRAKER [scrambling up on his knees most indignantly] Look here: Louisa Straker is my sister, see? Wot do you mean by gassin about her like this? Wotshe got to do with you?
    118
   
  MENDOZA. A dramatic coincidence! You are Enry, her favorite brother!
    119
   
  STRAKER. Oo are you callin Enry? What call have you to take a liberty with my name or with hers? For two pins I’d punch your fat ed, so I would.
    120
   
  MENDOZA [with grandiose calm] If I let you do it, will you promise to brag of it afterwards to her? She will be reminded of her Mendoza: that is all I desire.
    121
   
  TANNER. This is genuine devotion, Henry. You should respect it.
    122
   
  STRAKER [fiercely] Funk, more likely.
    123
   
  MENDOZA [springing to his feet] Funk! Young man: I come of a famous family of fighters; and as your sister well knows, you would have as much chance against me as a perambulator against your motor car.
    124
   
  STRAKER [secretly daunted, but rising from his knees with an air of reckless pugnacity] I aint afraid of you. With your Louisa! Louisa! Miss Straker is good enough for you, I should think.
    125
   
  MENDOZA. I wish you could persuade her to think so.
    126
   
  STRAKER [exasperated] Here—
    127
   
  TANNER [rising quickly and interposing] Oh come, Henry: even if you could fight the President you cant fight the whole League of the Sierra. Sit down again and be friendly. A cat may look at a king; and even a President of brigands may look at your sister. All this family pride is really very old fashioned.
    128
   
  STRAKER [subdued, but grumbling] Let him look at her. But wot does he mean by makin out that she ever looked at im? [Reluctantly resuming his couch on the turf] Ear him talk, one ud think she was keepin company with him. [He turns his back on them and composes himself to sleep].
    129
   
  MENDOZA [to Tanner, becoming more confidential as he finds himself virtually alone with a sympathetic listener in the still starlight of the mountains, for all the rest are asleep by this time] It was just so with her, sir. Her intellect reached forward into the twentieth century: her social prejudices and family affections reached back into the dark ages. Ah, sir, how the words of Shakespear seem to fit every crisis in our emotions!
  I loved Louisa: 40,000 brothers
  Could not with all their quantity of love
  Make up my sum.
And so on. I forget the rest. Call it madness if you will—infatuation. I am an able man, a strong man: in ten years I should have owned a first-class hotel. I met her; and—you see!—I am a brigand, an outcast. Even Shakespear cannot do justice to what I feel for Louisa. Let me read you some lines that I have written about her myself. However slight their literary merit may be, they express what I feel better than any casual words can. [He produces a packet of hotel bills, scrawled with manuscript, and kneels at the fire to decipher them, poking it with a stick to make it glow].
    130
   
  TANNER [slapping him rudely on the shoulder] Put them in the fire, President.
    131
   
  MENDOZA [startled] Eh?
    132
   
  TANNER. You are sacrificing your career to a monomania.
    133
   
  MENDOZA. I know it.
    134
   
  TANNER. No you dont. No man would commit such a crime against himself if he really knew what he was doing. How can you look round at these august hills, look up at this divine sky, taste this finely tempered air, and then talk like a literary hack on a second floor in Bloomsbury?
    135
   
  MENDOZA [shaking his head] The Sierra is no better than Bloomsbury when once the novelty has worn off. Besides, these mountains make you dream of women—of women with magnificent hair.
    136
   
  TANNER. Of Louisa, in short. They will not make me dream of women, my friend: I am heartwhole.
    137
   
  MENDOZA. Do not boast until morning, sir. This is a strange country for dreams.
    138
   
  TANNER. Well, we shall see. Goodnight. [He lies down and composes himself to sleep].
  Mendoza, with a sigh, follows his example: and for a few moments there is peace in the Sierra. Then Mendoza sits up suddenly and says pleadingly to Tanner—
    139
   
  MENDOZA. Just allow me to read a few lines before you go to sleep. I should really like your opinion of them.
    140
   
  TANNER [drowsily] Go on. I am listening.
    141
   
  MENDOZA. I saw thee first in Whitsun week
  Louisa, Louisa—
    142
   
  TANNER [rousing himself] My dear President, Louisa is a very pretty name; but it really doesnt rhyme well to Whitsun week.
    143
   
  MENDOZA. Of course not. Louisa is not the rhyme, but the refrain.
    144
   
  TANNER [subsiding] Ah, the refrain. I beg your pardon. Go on.
    145
   
  MENDOZA. Perhaps you do not care for that one: I think you will like this better. [He recites, in rich soft tones, and in slow time]
  Louisa, I love thee.
  I love thee, Louisa.
  Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I love thee.
  One name and one phrase make my music, Louisa.
  Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I love thee.

  Mendoza thy lover,
  Thy lover, Mendoza,
  Mendoza adoringly lives for Louisa.
  Theres nothing but that in the world for Mendoza.
  Louisa, Louisa, Mendoza adores thee.

  [Affected] There is no merit in producing beautiful lines upon such a name. Louisa is an exquisite name, is it not?
    146
   
  TANNER [all but asleep, responds with faint groan].
    147
   
  MENDOZA. O wert thou, Louisa,
  The wife of Mendoza,
  Mendoza’s Louisa, Louisa Mendoza,
  How blest were the life of Louisa’s Mendoza!
  How painless his longing of love for Louisa!

  That is real poetry—from the heart—from the heart of hearts. Dont you think it will move her?
  No answer.
  [Resignedly] Asleep, as usual. Doggrel to all the world: heavenly music to me! Idiot that I am to wear my heart on my sleeve! [He composes himself to sleep, murmuring] Louisa, I love thee; I love thee, Louisa; Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I—
  Straker snores; rolls over on his side; and relapses into sleep. Stillness settles on the Sierra; and the darkness deepens. The fire has again buried itself in white ash and ceased to glow. The peaks shew unfathomably dark against the starry firmament; but now the stars dim and vanish; and the sky seems to steal away out of the universe. Instead of the Sierra there is nothing: omnipresent nothing. No sky, no peaks, no light, no sound, no time nor space, utter void. Then somewhere the beginning of a pallor, and with it a faint throbbing buzz as of a ghostly violoncello palpitating on the same note endlessly. A couple of ghostly violins presently take advantage of this bass
[graphic]
and therewith the pallor reveals a man in the void, an incorporeal but visible man, seated, absurdly enough, on nothing. For a moment he raises his head as the music passes him by. Then, with a heavy sigh, he droops in utter dejection; and the violins, discouraged, retrace their melody in despair and at last give it up, extinguished by wailings from uncanny wind instruments, thus:—
[graphic]
It is all very odd. One recognizes the Mozartian strain; and on this hint, and by the aid of certain sparkles of violet light in the pallor, the man’s costume explains itself as that of a Spanish nobleman of the XV–XVI. century. Don Juan, of course; but where? why? how? Besides, in the brief lifting of his face, now hidden by his hat brim, there was a curious suggestion of Tanner. A more critical, fastidious, handsome face, paler and colder, without Tanner’s impetuous credulity and enthusiasm, and without a touch of his modern plutocratic vulgarity, but still a resemblance, even an identity. The name too: Don Juan Tenorio, John Tanner. Where on earth—or elsewhere—have we got to from the XX century and the Sierra?
  Another pallor in the void, this time not violet, but a disagreeable smoky yellow. With it, the whisper of a ghostly clarinet turning this tune into infinite sadness:
[graphic]
The yellowish pallor moves: there is an old crone wandering in the void, bent and toothless; draped, as well as one can guess, in the coarse brown frock of some religious order. She wanders and wanders in her slow hopeless way, much as a wasp flies in its rapid busy way, until she blunders against the thing she seeks: companionship. With a sob of relief the poor old creature clutches at the presence of the man and addresses him in her dry unlovely voice, which can still express pride and resolution as well as suffering.
    148
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Excuse me; but I am so lonely; and this place is so awful.
    149
   
  DON JUAN. A new comer?
    150
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Yes: I suppose I died this morning. I confessed; I had extreme unction; I was in bed with my family about me and my eyes fixed on the cross. Then it grew dark; and when the light came back it was this light by which I walk seeing nothing. I have wandered for hours in horrible loneliness.
    151
   
  DON JUAN [sighing] Ah! you have not yet lost the sense of time. One soon does, in eternity.
    152
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Where are we?
    153
   
  DON JUAN. In hell.
    154
   
  THE OLD WOMAN [proudly] Hell! I in hell! How dare you?
    155
   
  DON JUAN [unimpressed] Why not, Señora!
    156
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. You do not know to whom you are speaking. I am a lady, and a faithful daughter of the Church.
    157
   
  DON JUAN. I do not doubt it.
    158
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. But how then can I be in hell? Purgatory, perhaps: I have not been perfect: who has? But hell! oh, you are lying.
    159
   
  DON JUAN. Hell, Señora, I assure you; hell at its best: that is, its most solitary—though perhaps you would prefer company.
    160
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. But I have sincerely repented; I have confessed—
    161
   
  DON JUAN. How much?
    162
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. More sins than I really committed. I loved confession.
    163
   
  DON JUAN. Ah, that is perhaps as bad as confessing too little. At all events, Señora, whether by oversight or intention, you are certainly damned, like myself; and there is nothing for it now but to make the best of it.
    164
   
  THE OLD WOMAN [indignantly] Oh! and I might have been so much wickeder! All my good deeds wasted! It is unjust.
    165
   
  DON JUAN. No: you were fully and clearly warned. For your bad deeds, vicarious atonement, mercy without justice. For your good deeds, justice without mercy. We have many good people here.
    166
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Were you a good man?
    167
   
  DON JUAN. I was a murderer.
    168
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. A murderer! Oh, how dare they send me to herd with murderers! I was not as bad as that: I was a good woman. There is some mistake: where can I have it set right?
    169
   
  DON JUAN. I do not know whether mistakes can be corrected here. Probably they will not admit a mistake even if they have made one.
    170
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. But whom can I ask?
    171
   
  DON JUAN. I should ask the Devil, Señora: he understands the ways of this place, which is more than I ever could.
    172
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. The Devil! I speak to the Devil!
    173
   
  DON JUAN. In hell, Señora, the Devil is the leader of the best society.
    174
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. I tell you, wretch, I know I am not in hell.
    175
   
  DON JUAN. How do you know?
    176
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Because I feel no pain.
    177
   
  DON JUAN. Oh, then there is no mistake: you are intentionally damned.
    178
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Why do you say that?
    179
   
  DON JUAN. Because hell, Señora, is a place for the wicked. The wicked are quite comfortable in it: it was made for them. You tell me you feel no pain. I conclude you are one of those for whom hell exists.
    180
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Do you feel no pain?
    181
   
  DON JUAN. I am not one of the wicked, Señora; therefore it bores me, bores me beyond description, beyond belief.
    182
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Not one of the wicked! You said you were a murderer.
    183
   
  DON JUAN. Only a duel. I ran my sword through an old man who was trying to run his through me.
    184
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. If you were a gentleman, that was not a murder.
    185
   
  DON JUAN. The old man called it murder, because he was, he said, defending his daughter’s honor. By this he meant that because I foolishly fell in love with her and told her so, she screamed; and he tried to assassinate me after calling me insulting names.
    186
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. You were like all men. Libertines and murderers all, all, all!
    187
   
  DON JUAN. And yet we meet here, dear lady.
    188
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Listen to me. My father was slain by just such a wretch as you, in just such a duel, for just such a cause. I screamed: it was my duty. My father drew on my assailant: his honor demanded it. He fell: that was the reward of honor. I am here: in hell, you tell me: that is the reward of duty. Is there justice in heaven?
    189
   
  DON JUAN. No; but there is justice in hell: heaven is far above such idle human personalities. You will be welcome in hell, Señora. Hell is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of the seven deadly virtues. All the wickedness on earth is done in their name: where else but in hell should they have their reward? Have I not told you that the truly damned are those who are happy in hell?
    190
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. And are you happy here?
    191
   
  DON JUAN [springing to his feet] No; and that is the enigma on which I ponder in darkness. Why am I here? I, who repudiated all duty, trampled honor underfoot, and laughed at justice!
    192
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, what do I care why you are here? Why am I here? I, who sacrificed all my inclinations to womanly virtue and propriety!
    193
   
  DON JUAN. Patience, lady: you will be perfectly happy and at home here. As saith the poet, “Hell is a city much like Seville.”
    194
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Happy! here! where I am nothing! where I am nobody!
    195
   
  DON JUAN. Not at all: you are a lady; and wherever ladies are is hell. Do not be surprised or terrified: you will find everything here that a lady can desire, including devils who will serve you from sheer love of servitude, and magnify your importance for the sake of dignifying their service—the best of servants.
    196
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. My servants will be devils!

 DON JUAN. Have you ever had servants who were not devils?
    198
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Never: they were devils, perfect devils, all of them. But that is only a manner of speaking. I thought you meant that my servants here would be real devils.
    199
   
  DON JUAN. No more real devils than you will be a real lady. Nothing is real here. That is the horror of damnation.
    200
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, this is all madness. This is worse than fire and the worm.
    201
   
  DON JUAN. For you, perhaps, there are consolations. For instance: how old were you when you changed from time to eternity?
    202
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Do not ask me how old I was—as if I were a thing of the past. I am 77.
    203
   
  DON JUAN. A ripe age, Señora. But in hell old age is not tolerated. It is too real. Here we worship Love and Beauty. Our souls being entirely damned, we cultivate our hearts. As a lady of 77, you would not have a single acquaintance in hell.
    204
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. How can I help my age, man?
    205
   
  DON JUAN. You forget that you have left your age behind you in the realm of time. You are no more 77 than you are 7 or 17 or 27.
    206
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Nonsense!
    207
   
  DON JUAN. Consider, Señora: was not this true even when you lived on earth? When you were 70, were you really older underneath your wrinkles and your grey hairs than when you were 30?
    208
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. No, younger: at 30 I was a fool. But of what use is it to feel younger and look older?
    209
   
  DON JUAN. You see, Señora, the look was only an illusion. Your wrinkles lied, just as the plump smooth skin of many a stupid girl of 17, with heavy spirits and decrepit ideas, lies about her age. Well, here we have no bodies: we see each other as bodies only because we learnt to think about one another under that aspect when we were alive; and we still think in that way; knowing no other. But we can appear to one another at what age we choose. You have but to will any of your old looks back, and back they will come.
    210
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. It cannot be true.
    211
   
  DON JUAN. Try.
    212
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. Seventeen!
    213
   
  DON JUAN. Stop. Before you decide, I had better tell you that these things are a matter of fashion. Occasionally we have a rage for 17; but it does not last long. Just at present the fashionable age is 40—or say 37; but there are signs of a change. If you were at all good-looking at 27, I should suggest your trying that, and setting a new fashion.
    214
   
  THE OLD WOMAN. I do not believe a word you are saying. However, 27 be it. [Whisk! the old woman becomes a young one, magnificently attired, and so handsome that in the radiance into which her dull yellow halo has suddenly lightened one might almost mistake her for Ann Whitefield].
    215
   
  DON JUAN. Doña Ana de Ulloa!
    216
   
  ANA. What? You know me!
    217
   
  DON JUAN. And you forget me!
    218
   
  ANA. I cannot see your face. [He raises his hat]. Don Juan Tenorio! Monster! You who slew my father! even here you pursue me.
    219
   
  DON JUAN. I protest I do not pursue you. Allow me to withdraw [going].
    220
   
  ANA [seizing his arm] You shall not leave me alone in this dreadful place.
    221
   
  DON JUAN. Provided my staying be not interpreted as pursuit.
    222
   
  ANA [releasing him] You may well wonder how I can endure your presence. My dear, dear father!
    223
   
  DON JUAN. Would you like to see him?
    224
   
  ANA. My father here!!!
    225
   
  DON JUAN. No: he is in heaven.
    226
   
  ANA. I knew it. My noble father! He is looking down on us now. What must he feel to see his daughter in this place, and in conversation with his murderer!
    227
   
  DON JUAN. By the way, if we should meet him—
    228
   
  ANA. How can we meet him? He is in heaven.
    229
   
  DON JUAN. He condescends to look in upon us here from time to time. Heaven bores him. So let me warn you that if you meet him he will be mortally offended if you speak of me as his murderer! He maintains that he was a much better swordsman than I, and that if his foot had not slipped he would have killed me. No doubt he is right: I was not a good fencer. I never dispute the point; so we are excellent friends.
    230
   
  ANA. It is no dishonor to a soldier to be proud of his skill in arms.
    231
   
  DON JUAN. You would rather not meet him, probably.
    232
   
  ANA. How dare you say that?
    233
   
  DON JUAN. Oh, that is the usual feeling here. You may remember that on earth—though of course we never confessed it—the death of anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them.
    234
   
  ANA. Monster! Never, never.
    235
   
  DON JUAN [placidly] I see you recognize the feeling. Yes: a funeral was always a festivity in black, especially the funeral of a relative. At all events, family ties are rarely kept up here. Your father is quite accustomed to this: he will not expect any devotion from you.
    236
   
  ANA. Wretch: I wore mourning for him all my life.
    237
   
  DON JUAN. Yes: it became you. But a life of mourning is one thing: an eternity of it quite another. Besides, here you are as dead as he. Can anything be more ridiculous than one dead person mourning for another? Do not look shocked, my dear Ana; and do not be alarmed: there is plenty of humbug in hell (indeed there is hardly anything else); but the humbug of death and age and change is dropped because here we are all dead and all eternal. You will pick up our ways soon.
    238
   
  ANA. And will all the men call me their dear Ana?
    239
   
  DON JUAN. No. That was a slip of the tongue. I beg your pardon.
    240
   
  ANA [almost tenderly] Juan: did you really love me when you behaved so disgracefully to me?
    241
   
  DON JUAN [impatiently] Oh, I beg you not to begin talking about love. Here they talk of nothing else but love—its beauty, its holiness, its spirituality, its devil knows what!—excuse me; but it does so bore me. They dont know what theyre talking about: I do. They think they have achieved the perfection of love because they have no bodies. Sheer imaginative debauchery! Faugh!
    242
   
  ANA. Has even death failed to refine your soul, Juan? Has the terrible judgment of which my father’s statue was the minister taught you no reverence?
    243
   
  DON JUAN. How is that very flattering statue, by the way? Does it still come to supper with naughty people and cast them into this bottomless pit?
    244
   
  ANA. It has been a great expense to me. The boys in the monastery school would not let it alone: the mischievous ones broke it; and the studious ones wrote their names on it. Three new noses in two years, and fingers without end. I had to leave it to its fate at last; and now I fear it is shockingly mutilated. My poor father!
    245
   
  DON JUAN. Hush! Listen! [Two great chords rolling on syncopated waves of sound break forth: D minor and its dominant: a sound of dreadful joy to all musicians]. Ha! Mozart’s statue music. It is your father. You had better disappear until I prepare him. [She vanishes].
  From the void comes a living statue of white marble, designed to represent a majestic old man. But he waives his majesty with infinite grace; walks with a feather-like step; and makes every wrinkle in his war worn visage brim over with holiday joyousness. To his sculptor he owes a perfectly trained figure, which he carries erect and trim; and the ends of his moustache curl up, elastic as watchsprings, giving him an air which, but for its Spanish dignity, would be called jaunty. He is on the pleasantest terms with Don Juan. His voice, save for a much more distinguished intonation, is so like the voice of Roebuck Ramsden that it calls attention to the fact that they are not unlike one another in spite of their very different fashions of shaving].
    246
   
  DON JUAN. Ah, here you are, my friend. Why dont you learn to sing the splendid music Mozart has written for you?
    247
   
  THE STATUE. Unluckily he has written it for a bass voice. Mine is a counter tenor. Well: have you repented yet?
    248
   
  DON JUAN. I have too much consideration for you to repent, Don Gonzalo. If I did, you would have no excuse for coming from Heaven to argue with me.
    249
   
  THE STATUE. True. Remain obdurate, my boy. I wish I had killed you, as I should have done but for an accident. Then I should have come here; and you would have had a statue and a reputation for piety to live up to. Any news?
    250
   
  DON JUAN. Yes: your daughter is dead.
    251
   
  THE STATUE [puzzled] My daughter? [Recollecting] Oh! the one you were taken with. Let me see: what was her name?
    252
   
  DON JUAN. Ana.
    253
   
  THE STATUE. To be sure: Ana. A goodlooking girl, if I recollect aright. Have you warned Whatshisname—her husband?
    254
   
  DON JUAN. My friend Ottavio? No: I have not seen him since Ana arrived.
  Ana comes indignantly to light.
    255
   
  ANA. What does this mean? Ottavio here and your friend! And you, father, have forgotten my name. You are indeed turned to stone.
    256
   
  THE STATUE. My dear: I am so much more admired in marble than I ever was in my own person that I have retained the shape the sculptor gave me. He was one of the first men of his day: you must acknowledge that.
    257
   
  ANA. Father! Vanity! personal vanity! from you!
    258
   
  THE STATUE. Ah, you outlived that weakness, my daughter: you must be nearly 80 by this time. I was cut off (by an accident) in my 64th year, and am considerably your junior in consequence. Besides, my child, in this place, what our libertine friend here would call the farce of parental wisdom is dropped. Regard me, I beg, as a fellow creature, not as a father.
    259
   
  ANA. You speak as this villain speaks.
    260
   
  THE STATUE. Juan is a sound thinker, Ana. A bad fencer, but a sound thinker.
    261
   
  ANA [horror creeping upon her] I begin to understand. These are devils, mocking me. I had better pray.
    262
   
  THE STATUE [consoling her] No, no, no, my child: do not pray. If you do, you will throw away the main advantage of this place. Written over the gate here are the words “Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.” Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself. [Don Juan sighs deeply]. You sigh, friend Juan; but if you dwelt in heaven, as I do, you would realize your advantages.
    263
   
  DON JUAN. You are in good spirits to-day, Commander. You are positively brilliant. What is the matter?
    264
   
  THE STATUE. I have come to a momentous decision, my boy. But first, where is our friend the Devil? I must consult him in the matter. And Ana would like to make his acquaintance, no doubt.
    265
   
  ANA. You are preparing some torment for me.
    266
   
  DON JUAN. All that is superstition, Ana. Reassure yourself. Remember: the Devil is not so black as he is painted.
    267
   
  THE STATUE. Let us give him a call.
  At the wave of the statue’s hand the great chords roll out again: but this time Mozart’s music gets grotesquely adulterated with Gounod’s. A scarlet halo begins to glow; and into it the Devil rises, very Mephistophelean, and not at all unlike Mendoza, though not so interesting. He looks older; is getting prematurely bald; and, in spite of an effusion of good nature and friendliness, is peevish and sensitive when his advances are not reciprocated. He does not inspire much confidence in his powers of hard work or endurance, and is, on the whole, a disagreeably self-indulgent looking person; but he is clever and plausible, though perceptibly less well bred than the two other men, and enormously less vital than the woman.
    268
   
  THE DEVIL [heartily] Have I the pleasure of again receiving a visit from the illustrious Commander of Calatrava? [Coldly] Don Juan, your servant. [Politely] And a strange lady? My respects, Señora.
    269
   
  ANA. Are you—
    270
   
  THE DEVIL [bowing] Lucifer, at your service.
    271
   
  ANA. I shall go mad.
    272
   
  THE DEVIL [gallantly] Ah, Señora, do not be anxious. You come to us from earth, full of the prejudices and terrors of that priest-ridden place. You have heard me ill spoken of; and yet, believe me, I have hosts of friends there.
    273
   
  ANA. Yes: you reign in their hearts.
    274
   
  THE DEVIL [shaking his head] You flatter me, Señora; but you are mistaken. It is true that the world cannot get on without me; but it never gives me credit for that: in its heart it mistrusts and hates me. Its sympathies are all with misery, with poverty, with starvation of the body and of the heart. I call on it to sympathize with joy, with love, with happiness, with beauty—
    275
   
  DON JUAN [nauseated] Excuse me: I am going. You know I cannot stand this.
    276
   
  THE DEVIL [angrily] Yes: I know that you are no friend of mine.
    277
   
  THE STATUE. What harm is he doing you, Juan? It seems to me that he was talking excellent sense when you interrupted him.
    278
   
  THE DEVIL [warmly patting the statue’s hand] Thank you, my friend: thank you. You have always understood me: he has always disparaged and avoided me.
    279
   
  DON JUAN. I have treated you with perfect courtesy.
    280
   
  THE DEVIL. Courtesy! What is courtesy? I care nothing for mere courtesy. Give me warmth of heart, true sincerity, the bond of sympathy with love and joy—
    281
   
  DON JUAN. You are making me ill.
    282
   
  THE DEVIL. There! [Appealing to the statue] You hear, sir! Oh, by what irony of fate was this cold selfish egotist sent to my kingdom, and you taken to the icy mansions of the sky!
    283
   
  THE STATUE. I cant complain. I was a hypocrite; and it served me right to be sent to heaven.
    284
   
  THE DEVIL. Why, sir, do you not join us, and leave a sphere for which your temperament is too sympathetic, your heart too warm, your capacity for enjoyment too generous?
    285
   
  THE STATUE. I have this day resolved to do so. In future, excellent Son of the Morning, I am yours. I have left Heaven for ever.
    286
   
  THE DEVIL [again touching the marble hand] Ah, what an honor! what a triumph for our cause! Thank you, thank you. And now, my friend—I may call you so at last—could you not persuade him to take the place you have left vacant above?
    287
   
  THE STATUE [shaking his head] I cannot conscientiously recommend anybody with whom I am on friendly terms to deliberately make himself dull and uncomfortable.
    288
   
  THE DEVIL. Of course not; but are you sure he would be uncomfortable? Of course you know best: you brought him here originally; and we had the greatest hopes of him. His sentiments were in the best taste of our best people. You remember how he sang? [He begins to sing in a nasal operatic baritone, tremulous from an eternity of misuse in the French manner]
  Vivan le femmine!
  Viva il buon vino!
    289
   
  THE STATUE [taking up the tune an octave higher in his counter tenor]
  Sostegno e gloria
  D’umanità.
    290
   
  THE DEVIL. Precisely. Well, he never sings for us now.
    291
   
  DON JUAN. Do you complain of that? Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to abstain?
    292
   
  THE DEVIL. You dare blaspheme against the sublimest of the arts!
    293
   
  DON JUAN [with cold disgust] You talk like a hysterical woman fawning on a fiddler.
    294
   
  THE DEVIL. I am not angry. I merely pity you. You have no soul; and you are unconscious of all that you lose. Now you, Señor Commander, are a born musician. How well you sing! Mozart would be delighted if he were still here; but he moped and went to heaven. Curious how these clever men, whom you would have supposed born to be popular here, have turned out social failures, like Don Juan!
    295
   
  DON JUAN. I am really very sorry to be a social failure.
    296
   
  THE DEVIL. Not that we dont admire your intellect, you know. We do. But I look at the matter from your own point of view. You dont get on with us. The place doesnt suit you. The truth is, you have—I wont say no heart; for we know that beneath all your affected cynicism you have a warm one—
    297
   
  DON JUAN [shrinking] Dont, please dont.
    298
   
  THE DEVIL [nettled] Well, youve no capacity for enjoyment. Will that satisfy you?
    299
   
  DON JUAN. It is a somewhat less insufferable form of cant than the other. But if youll allow me, I’ll take refuge, as usual, in solitude.
    300
   
  THE DEVIL. Why not take refuge in Heaven? Thats the proper place for you. [To Ana] Come, Señora! could you not persuade him for his own good to try change of air?
    301
   
  ANA. But can he go to heaven if he wants to?
    302
   
  THE DEVIL. Whats to prevent him?
    303
   
  ANA. Can anybody—can I go to Heaven if I want to?
    304
   
  THE DEVIL [rather contemptuously] Certainly, if your taste lies that way.
    305
   
  ANA. But why doesnt everybody go to Heaven, then?
    306
   
  THE STATUE [chuckling] I can tell you that, my dear. It’s because heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: thats why.
    307
   
  THE DEVIL. His excellency the Commander puts it with military bluntness; but the strain of living in Heaven is intolerable. There is a notion that I was turned out of it; but as a matter of fact nothing could have induced me to stay there. I simply left it and organized this place.
    308
   
  THE STATUE. I dont wonder at it. Nobody could stand an eternity of heaven.
    309
   
  THE DEVIL. Oh, it suits some people. Let us be just, Commander: it is a question of temperament. I dont admire the heavenly temperament: I dont understand it: I dont know that I particularly want to understand it; but it takes all sorts to make a universe. There is no accounting for tastes: there are people who like it. I think Don Juan would like it.
    310
   
  DON JUAN. But—pardon my frankness—could you really go back there if you desired to; or are the grapes sour?
    311
   
  THE DEVIL. Back there! I often go back there. Have you never read the book of Job? Have you any canonical authority for assuming that there is any barrier between our circle and the other one?
    312
   
  ANA. But surely there is a great gulf fixed.
    313
   
  THE DEVIL. Dear lady: a parable must not be taken literally. The gulf is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic temperament. What more impassable gulf could you have? Think of what you have seen on earth. There is no physical gulf between the philosopher’s class room and the bull ring; but the bull fighters do not come to the class room for all that. Have you ever been in the country where I have the largest following—England? There they have great racecourses, and also concert rooms where they play the classical compositions of his Excellency’s friend Mozart. Those who go to the racecourses can stay away from them and go to the classical concerts instead if they like: there is no law against it; for Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do. And the classical concert is admitted to be a higher, more cultivated, poetic, intellectual, ennobling place than the racecourse. But do the lovers of racing desert their sport and flock to the concert room? Not they. They would suffer there all the weariness the Commander has suffered in heaven. There is the great gulf of the parable between the two places. A mere physical gulf they could bridge; or at least I could bridge it for them (the earth is full of Devil’s Bridges); but the gulf of dislike is impassable and eternal. And that is the only gulf that separates my friends here from those who are invidiously called the blest.
    314
   
  ANA. I shall go to heaven at once.
    315
   
  THE STATUE. My child: one word of warning first. Let me complete my friend Lucifer’s similitude of the classical concert. At every one of these concerts in England you will find rows of weary people who are there, not because they really like classical music, but because they think they ought to like it. Well, there is the same thing in heaven. A number of people sit there in glory, not because they are happy, but because they think they owe it to their position to be in heaven. They are almost all English.
    316
   
  THE DEVIL. Yes: the Southerners give it up and join me just as you have done. But the English really do not seem to know when they are thoroughly miserable. An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
    317
   
  THE STATUE. In short, my daughter, if you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself there.
    318
   
  ANA. And who dares say that I am not naturally qualified for it? The most distinguished princes of the Church have never questioned it. I owe it to myself to leave this place at once.
    319
   
  THE DEVIL [offended] As you please, Señora. I should have expected better taste from you.
    320
   
  ANA. Father: I shall expect you to come with me. You cannot stay here. What will people say?
    321
   
  THE STATUE. People! Why, the best people are here—princes of the church and all. So few go to Heaven, and so many come here, that the blest, once called a heavenly host, are a continually dwindling minority. The saints, the fathers, the elect of long ago are the cranks, the faddists, the outsiders of to-day.
    322
   
  THE DEVIL. It is true. From the beginning of my career I knew that I should win in the long run by sheer weight of public opinion, in spite of the long campaign of misrepresentation and calumny against me. At bottom the universe is a constitutional one; and with such a majority as mine I cannot be kept permanently out of office.
    323
   
  DON JUAN. I think, Ana, you had better stay here.
    324
   
  ANA [jealously] You do not want me to go with you.
    325
   
  DON JUAN. Surely you do not want to enter Heaven in the company of a reprobate like me.
    326
   
  ANA. All souls are equally precious. You repent, do you not?
    327
   
  DON JUAN. My dear Ana, you are silly. Do you suppose heaven is like earth, where people persuade themselves that what is done can be undone by repentance; that what is spoken can be unspoken by withdrawing it; that what is true can be annihilated by a general agreement to give it the lie? No: heaven is the home of the masters of reality: that is why I am going thither.
    328
   
  ANA. Thank you: I am going to heaven for happiness. I have had quite enough of reality on earth.
    329
   
  DON JUAN. Then you must stay here; for hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool’s paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer, “Make me a healthy animal.” But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, “the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on”—without getting us a step farther. And yet you want to leave this paradise!
    330
   
  ANA. But if Hell be so beautiful as this, how glorious must heaven be!
  The Devil, the Statue, and Don Juan all begin to speak at once in violent protest; then stop, abashed.
    331
   
  DON JUAN. I beg your pardon.
    332
   
  THE DEVIL. Not at all. I interrupted you.
    333
   
  THE STATUE. You were going to say something.
    334
   
  DON JUAN. After you, gentlemen.
    335
   
  THE DEVIL [to Don Juan] You have been so eloquent on the advantages of my dominions that I leave you to do equal justice to the drawbacks of the alternative establishment.
    336
   
  DON JUAN. In Heaven, as I picture it, dear lady, you live and work instead of playing and pretending. You face things as they are; you escape nothing but glamor; and your steadfastness and your peril are your glory. If the play still goes on here and on earth, and all the world is a stage, Heaven is at least behind the scenes. But Heaven cannot be described by metaphor. Thither I shall go presently, because there I hope to escape at last from lies and from the tedious, vulgar pursuit of happiness, to spend my eons in contemplation—
    337
   
  THE STATUE. Ugh!
    338
   
  DON JUAN. Señor Commander: I do not blame your disgust: a picture gallery is a dull place for a blind man. But even as you enjoy the contemplation of such romantic mirages as beauty and pleasure; so would I enjoy the contemplation of that which interests me above all things: namely, Life: the force that ever strives to attain greater power of contemplating itself. What made this brain of mine, do you think? Not the need to move my limbs; for a rat with half my brains moves as well as I. Not merely the need to do, but the need to know what I do, lest in my blind efforts to live I should be slaying myself.
    339
   
  THE STATUE. You would have slain yourself in your blind efforts to fence but for my foot slipping, my friend.
    340
   
  DON JUAN. Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous boredom before morning.
    341
   
  THE STATUE. Ha ha! Do you remember how I frightened you when I said something like that to you from my pedestal in Seville? It sounds rather flat without my trombones.
    342
   
  DON JUAN. They tell me it generally sounds flat with them, Commander.
    343
   
  ANA. Oh, do not interrupt with these frivolities, father. Is there nothing in Heaven but contemplation, Juan?
    344
   
  DON JUAN. In the Heaven I seek, no other joy. But there is the work of helping Life in its struggle upward. Think of how it wastes and scatters itself, how it raises up obstacles to itself and destroys itself in its ignorance and blindness. It needs a brain, this irresistible force, lest in its ignorance it should resist itself. What a piece of work is man! says the poet. Yes; but what a blunderer! Here is the highest miracle of organization yet attained by life, the most intensely alive thing that exists, the most conscious of all the organisms; and yet, how wretched are his brains! Stupidity made sordid and cruel by the realities learnt from toll and poverty: Imagination resolved to starve sooner than face these realities, piling up illusions to hide them, and calling itself cleverness, genius! And each accusing the other of its own defect: Stupidity accusing Imagination of folly, and Imagination accusing Stupidity of ignorance: whereas, alas! Stupidity has all the knowledge, and Imagination all the intelligence.
    345
   
  THE DEVIL. And a pretty kettle of fish they make of it between them. Did I not say, when I was arranging that affair of Faust’s, that all Man’s reason has done for him is to make him beastlier than any beast. One splendid body is worth the brains of a hundred dyspeptic, flatulent philosophers.
    346
   
  DON JUAN. You forget that brainless magnificence of body has been tried. Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but brain have existed and perished. The megatherium, the icthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven-league steps and hidden the day with cloud vast wings. Where are they now? Fossils in museums, and so few and imperfect at that, that a knuckle bone or a tooth of one of them is prized beyond the lives of a thousand soldiers. These things lived and wanted to live; but for lack of brains they did not know how to carry out their purpose, and so destroyed themselves.
    347
   
  THE DEVIL. And is Man any the less destroying himself for all this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man’s wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine. The peasant I tempt to-day eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a lady’s bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man’s industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness. What is his religion? An excuse for hating me. What is his law? An excuse for hanging you. What is his morality? Gentility! An excuse for consuming without producing. What is his art? An excuse for gloating over pictures of slaughter. What are his politics? Either the worship of a despot because a despot can kill, or parliamentary cockfighting. I spent an evening lately in a certain celebrated legislature, and heard the pot lecturing the kettle for its blackness, and ministers answering questions. When I left I chalked up on the door the old nursery saying “Ask no questions and you will be told no lies.” I bought a sixpenny family magazine, and found it full of pictures of young men shooting and stabbing one another. I saw a man die: he was a London bricklayer’s laborer with seven children. He left seventeen pounds club money; and his wife spent it all on his funeral and went into the workhouse with the children next day. She would not have spent sevenpence on her children’s schooling: the law had to force her to let them be taught gratuitously; but on death she spent all she had. Their imagination glows, their energies rise up at the idea of death, these people: they love it; and the more horrible it is the more they enjoy it. Hell is a place far above their comprehension: they derive their notion of it from two of the greatest fools that ever lived, an Italian and an Englishman. The Italian described it as a place of mud, frost, filth, fire, and venomous serpents: all torture. This ass, when he was not lying about me, was maundering about some woman whom he saw once in the street. The Englishman described me as being expelled from Heaven by cannons and gunpowder; and to this day every Briton believes that the whole of his silly story is in the Bible. What else he says I do not know; for it is all in a long poem which neither I nor anyone else ever succeeded in wading through. It is the same in everything. The highest form of literature is the tragedy, a play in which everybody is murdered at the end. In the old chronicles you read of earthquakes and pestilences, and are told that these shewed the power and majesty of God and the littleness of Man. Nowadays the chronicles describe battles. In a battle two bodies of men shoot at one another with bullets and explosive shells until one body runs away, when the others chase the fugitives on horseback and cut them to pieces as they fly. And this, the chronicle concludes, shews the greatness and majesty of empires, and the littleness of the vanquished. Over such battles the people run about the streets yelling with delight, and egg their Government on to spend hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter, whilst the strongest Ministers dare not spend an extra penny in the pound against the poverty and pestilence through which they themselves daily walk. I could give you a thousand instances; but they all come to the same thing: the power that governs the earth is not the power of Life but of Death; and the inner need that has nerved Life to the effort of organising itself into the human being is not the need for higher life but for a more efficient engine of destruction. The plague, the famine, the earthquake, the tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel enough: something more constantly, more ruthlessly, more ingeniously destructive was needed; and that something was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows, the electric chair; of sword and gun and poison gas: above all, of justice, duty, patriotism, and all the other isms by which even those who are clever enough to be humanely disposed are persuaded to become the most destructive of all the destroyers.
    348
   
  DON JUAN. Pshaw! all this is old. Your weak side, my diabolic friend, is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his own valuation. Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion of him. He loves to think of himself as bold and bad. He is neither one nor the other: he is only a coward. Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability. There are limits to what a mule or an ass will stand; but Man will suffer himself to be degraded until his vileness becomes so loathsome to his oppressors that they themselves are forced to reform it.
    349
   
  THE DEVIL. Precisely. And these are the creatures in whom you discover what you call a Life Force!
    350
   
  DON JUAN. Yes; for now comes the most surprising part of the whole business.
    351
   
  THE STATUE. Whats that?
    352
   
  DON JUAN. Why, that you can make any of these cowards brave by simply putting an idea into his head.
    353
   
  THE STATUE. Stuff! As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it’s as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But that about putting an idea into a man’s head is stuff and nonsense. In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.
    354
   
  DON JUAN. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men never really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to further a universal purpose—fighting for an idea, as they call it. Why was the Crusader braver than the pirate? Because he fought, not for himself, but for the Cross. What force was it that met him with a valor as reckless as his own? The force of men who fought, not for themselves, but for Islam. They took Spain from us though we were fighting for our very hearths and homes; but when we, too, fought for that mighty idea, a Catholic Church, we swept them back to Africa.
    355
   
  THE DEVIL [ironically] What! you a Catholic, Señor Don Juan! A devotee! My congratulations.
    356
   
  THE STATUE [seriously] Come, come! as a soldier, I can listen to nothing against the Church.
    357
   
  DON JUAN. Have no fear, Commander: this idea of a Catholic Church will survive Islam, will survive the Cross, will survive even that vulgar pageant of incompetent schoolboyish gladiators which you call the Army.
    358
   
  THE STATUE. Juan: you will force me to call you to account for this.
    359
   
  DON JUAN. Useless: I cannot fence. Every idea for which Man will die will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last that he is no better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better than Mahomet, he will arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on a barricade across the filthy slum he starves in, for universal liberty and equality.
    360
   
  THE STATUE. Bosh!
    361
   
  DON JUAN. What you call bosh is the only thing men dare die for. Later on, Liberty will not be Catholic enough: men will die for human perfection, to which they will sacrifice all their liberty gladly.
    362
   
  THE DEVIL. Ay: they will never be at a loss for an excuse for killing one another.
    363
   
  DON JUAN. What of that? It is not death that matters, but the fear of death. It is not killing and dying that degrades us, but base living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation. Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master. Men shall yet rise up, father against son and brother against brother, and kill one another for the great Catholic idea of abolishing slavery.
    364
   
  THE DEVIL. Yes, when the Liberty and Equality of which you prate shall have made free white Christians cheaper in the labor market than black heathen slaves sold by auction at the block.
    365
   
  DON JUAN. Never fear! the white laborer shall have his turn too. But I am not now defending the illusory forms the great ideas take. I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be enslaved whilst he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason. I tell you, gentlemen, if you can shew a man a piece of what he now calls God’s work to do, and what he will later on call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to himself personally.
    366
   
  ANA. Yes: he shirks all his responsibilities, and leaves his wife to grapple with them.
    367
   
  THE STATUE. Well said, Daughter. Do not let him talk you out of your common sense.
    368
   
  THE DEVIL. Alas! Señor Commander, now that we have got on to the subject of Woman, he will talk more than ever. However, I confess it is for me the one supremely interesting subject.
    369
   
  DON JUAN. To a woman, Señora, man’s duties and responsibilities begin and end with the task of getting bread for her children. To her, Man is only a means to the end of getting children and rearing them.
    370
   
  ANA. Is that your idea of a woman’s mind? I call it cynical and disgusting materialism.
    371
   
  DON JUAN. Pardon me, Ana: I said nothing about a woman’s whole mind. I spoke of her view of Man as a separate sex. It is no more cynical than her view of herself as above all things a Mother. Sexually, Woman is Nature’s contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement. Sexually, Man is Woman’s contrivance for fulfilling Nature’s behest in the most economical way. She knows by instinct that far back in the evolutional process she invented him, differentiated him, created him in order to produce something better than the single-sexed process can produce. Whilst he fulfils the purpose for which she made him, he is welcome to his dreams, his follies, his ideals, his heroisms, provided that the keystone of them all is the worship of woman, of motherhood, of the family, of the hearth. But how rash and dangerous it was to invent a separate creature whose sole function was her own impregnation! For mark what has happened. First, Man has multiplied on her hands until there are as many men as women; so that she has been unable to employ for her purposes more than a fraction of the immense energy she has left at his disposal by saving him the exhausting labor of gestation. This superfluous energy has gone to his brain and to his muscle. He has become too strong to be controlled by her bodily, and too imaginative and mentally vigorous to be content with mere self-reproduction. He has created civilization without consulting her, taking her domestic labor for granted as the foundation of it.

  ANA. That is true, at all events.
    373
   
  THE DEVIL. Yes; and this civilization! what is it, after all?
    374
   
  DON JUAN. After all, an excellent peg to hang your cynical commonplaces on; but before all, it is an attempt on Man’s part to make himself something more than the mere instrument of Woman’s purpose. So far, the result of Life’s continual effort not only to maintain itself, but to achieve higher and higher organization and completer self-consciousness, is only, at best, a doubtful campaign between its forces and those of Death and Degeneration. The battles in this campaign are mere blunders, mostly won, like actual military battles, in spite of the commanders.
    375
   
  THE STATUE. That is a dig at me. No matter: go on, go on.
    376
   
  DON JUAN. It is a dig at a much higher power than you, Commander. Still, you must have noticed in your profession that even a stupid general can win battles when the enemy’s general is a little stupider.
    377
   
  THE STATUE [very seriously] Most true, Juan, most true. Some donkeys have amazing luck.
    378
   
  DON JUAN. Well, the Life Force is stupid; but it is not so stupid as the forces of Death and Degeneration. Besides, these are in its pay all the time. And so Life wins, after a fashion. What mere copiousness of fecundity can supply and mere greed preserve, we possess. The survival of whatever form of civilization can produce the best rifle and the best fed riflemen is assured.
    379
   
  THE DEVIL. Exactly! the survival, not of the most effective means of Life but of the most effective means of Death. You always come back to my point, in spite of your wrigglings and evasions and sophistries, not to mention the intolerable length of your speeches.
    380
   
  DON JUAN. Oh, come! who began making long speeches? However, if I overtax your intellect, you can leave us and seek the society of love and beauty and the rest of your favorite boredoms.
    381
   
  THE DEVIL [much offended] This is not fair, Don Juan, and not civil. I am also on the intellectual plane. Nobody can appreciate it more than I do. I am arguing fairly with you, and, I think, successfully refuting you. Let us go on for another hour if you like.
    382
   
  DON JUAN. Good: let us.
    383
   
  THE STATUE. Not that I see any prospect of your coming to any point in particular, Juan. Still, since in this place, instead of merely killing time we have to kill eternity, go ahead by all means.
    384
   
  DON JUAN [somewhat impatiently] My point, you marble-headed old masterpiece, is only a step ahead of you. Are we agreed that Life is a force which has made innumerable experiments in organizing itself; that the mammoth and the man, the mouse and the megatherium, the flies and the fleas and the Fathers of the Church, are all more or less successful attempts to build up that raw force into higher and higher individuals, the ideal individual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and withal completely, unilludedly self-conscious: in short, a god?
    385
   
  THE DEVIL. I agree, for the sake of argument.
    386
   
  THE STATUE. I agree, for the sake of avoiding argument.
    387
   
  ANA. I most emphatically disagree as regards the Fathers of the Church; and I must beg you not to drag them into the argument.
    388
   
  DON JUAN. I did so purely for the sake of alliteration, Ana; and I shall make no further allusion to them. And now, since we are, with that exception, agreed so far, will you not agree with me further that Life has not measured the success of its attempts at godhead by the beauty or bodily perfection of the result, since in both these respects the birds, as our friend Aristophanes long ago pointed out, are so extraordinarily superior, with their power of flight and their lovely plumage, and, may I add, the touching poetry of their loves and nestings, that it is inconceivable that Life, having once produced them, should, if love and beauty were her object, start off on another line and labor at the clumsy elephant and the hideous ape, whose grandchildren we are?
    389
   
  ANA. Aristophanes was a heathen; and you, Juan, I am afraid, are very little better.
    390
   
  THE DEVIL. You conclude, then, that Life was driving at clumsiness and ugliness?
    391
   
  DON JUAN. No, perverse devil that you are, a thousand times no. Life was driving at brains—at its darling object: an organ by which it can attain not only self-consciousness but self-understanding.
    392
   
  THE STATUE. This is metaphysics, Juan. Why the devil should—[to The Devil] I beg your pardon.
    393
   
  THE DEVIL. Pray dont mention it. I have always regarded the use of my name to secure additional emphasis as a high compliment to me. It is quite at your service, Commander.
    394
   
  THE STATUE. Thank you: thats very good of you. Even in heaven, I never quite got out of my old military habits of speech. What I was going to ask Juan was why Life should bother itself about getting a brain. Why should it want to understand itself? Why not be content to enjoy itself?
    395
   
  DON JUAN. Without a brain, Commander, you would enjoy yourself without knowing it, and so lose all the fun.
    396
   
  THE STATUE. True, most true. But I am quite content with brain enough to know that I’m enjoying myself. I dont want to understand why. In fact, I’d rather not. My experience is that one’s pleasures dont bear thinking about.
    397
   
  DON JUAN. That is why intellect is so unpopular. But to Life, the force behind the Man, intellect is a necessity, because without it he blunders into death. Just as Life, after ages of struggle, evolved that wonderful bodily organ the eye, so that the living organism could see where it was going and what was coming to help or threaten it, and thus avoid a thousand dangers that formerly slew it, so it is evolving to-day a mind’s eye that shall see, not the physical world, but the purpose of Life, and thereby enable the individual to work for that purpose instead of thwarting and baffling it by setting up shortsighted personal aims as at present. Even as it is, only one sort of man has ever been happy, has ever been universally respected among all the conflicts of interests and illusions.
    398
   
  THE STATUE. You mean the military man.
    399
   
  DON JUAN. Commander: I do not mean the military man. When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind. No: I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, in invention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means. Of all other sorts of men I declare myself tired. They are tedious failures. When I was on earth, professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual hypochondriac any more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself about that either; so they called me Atheist and went their way. After them came the politician, who said there was only one purpose in nature, and that was to get him into parliament. I told him I did not care whether he got into parliament or not; so he called me Mugwump and went his way. Then came the romantic man, the Artist, with his love songs and his paintings and his poems; and with him I had great delight for many years, and some profit; for I cultivated my senses for his sake; and his songs taught me to hear better, his paintings to see better, and his poems to feel more deeply. But he led me at last into the worship of Woman.
    400
   
  ANA. Juan!
    401
   
  DON JUAN. Yes: I came to believe that in her voice was all the music of the song, in her face all the beauty of the painting, and in her soul all the emotion of the poem.
    402
   
  ANA. And you were disappointed, I suppose. Well, was it her fault that you attributed all these perfections to her?
    403
   
  DON JUAN. Yes, partly. For with a wonderful instinctive cunning, she kept silent and allowed me to glorify her: to mistake my own visions, thoughts, and feelings for hers. Now my friend the romantic man was often too poor or too timid to approach those women who were beautiful or refined enough to seem to realize his ideal; and so he went to his grave believing in his dream. But I was more favored by nature and circumstance. I was of noble birth and rich; and when my person did not please, my conversation flattered, though I generally found myself fortunate in both.
    404
   
  THE STATUE. Coxcomb!
    405
   
  DON JUAN. Yes; but even my coxcombry pleased. Well, I found that when I had touched a woman’s imagination, she would allow me to persuade myself that she loved me; but when my suit was granted she never said “I am happy: my love is satisfied”: she always said, first, “At last, the barriers are down,” and second, “When will you come again?”
    406
   
  ANA. That is exactly what men say.
    407
   
  DON JUAN. I protest I never said it. But all women say it. Well, these two speeches always alarmed me; for the first meant that the lady’s impulse had been solely to throw down my fortifications and gain my citadel; and the second openly announced that henceforth she regarded me as her property, and counted my time as already wholly at her disposal.
    408
   
  THE DEVIL. That is where your want of heart came in.
    409
   
  THE STATUE [shaking his head] You shouldnt repeat what a woman says, Juan.
    410
   
  ANA [severely] It should be sacred to you.
    411
   
  THE STATUE. Still, they certainly do say it. I never minded the barriers; but there was always a slight shock about the other, unless one was very hard hit indeed.
    412
   
  DON JUAN. Then the lady, who had been happy and idle enough before, became anxious, preoccupied with me, always intriguing, conspiring, pursuing, watching, waiting, bent wholly on making sure of her prey—I being the prey, you understand. Now this was not what I had bargained for. It may have been very proper and very natural; but it was not music, painting, poetry, and joy incarnated in a beautiful woman. I ran away from it. I ran away from it very often: in fact I became famous for running away from it.
    413
   
  ANA. Infamous, you mean.
    414
   
  DON JUAN. I did not run away from you. Do you blame me for running away from the others?
    415
   
  ANA. Nonsense, man. You are talking to a woman of 77 now. If you had had the chance, you would have run away from me too—if I had let you. You would not have found it so easy with me as with some of the others. If men will not be faithful to their home and their duties, they must be made to be. I daresay you all want to marry lovely incarnations of music and painting and poetry. Well, you cant have them, because they dont exist. If flesh and blood is not good enough for you you must go without: thats all. Women have to put up with flesh-and-blood husbands—and little enough of that too, sometimes; and you will have to put up with flesh-and-blood wives. [The Devil looks dubious. The Statue makes a wry face]. I see you dont like that, any of you; but it’s true, for all that; so if you dont like it you can lump it.
    416
   
  DON JUAN. My dear lady, you have put my whole case against romance into a few sentences. That is just why I turned my back on the romantic man with the artist nature, as he called his infatuation. I thanked him for teaching me to use my eyes and ears; but I told him that his beauty worshipping and happiness hunting and woman idealizing was not worth a dump as a philosophy of life; so he called me Philistine and went his way.
    417
   
  ANA. It seems that Woman taught you something, too, with all her defects.
    418
   
  DON JUAN. She did more: she interpreted all the other teaching for me. Ah, my friends, when the barriers were down for the first time, what an astounding illumination! I had been prepared for infatuation, for intoxication, for all the illusions of love’s young dream; and lo! never was my perception clearer, nor my criticism more ruthless. The most jealous rival of my mistress never saw every blemish in her more keenly than I. I was not duped: I took her without chloroform.
    419
   
  ANA. But you did take her.
    420
   
  DON JUAN. That was the revelation. Up to that moment I had never lost the sense of being my own master; never consciously taken a single step until my reason had examined and approved it. I had come to believe that I was a purely rational creature: a thinker! I said, with the foolish philosopher, “I think; therefore I am.” It was Woman who taught me to say “I am; therefore I think.” And also “I would think more; therefore I must be more.”
    421
   
  THE STATUE. This is extremely abstract and metaphysical, Juan. If you would stick to the concrete, and put your discoveries in the form of entertaining anecdotes about your adventures with women, your conversation would be easier to follow.
    422
   
  DON JUAN. Bah! what need I add? Do you not understand that when I stood face to face with Woman, every fibre in my clear critical brain warned me to spare her and save myself. My morals said No. My conscience said No. My chivalry and pity for her said No. My prudent regard for myself said No. My ear, practised on a thousand songs and symphonies; my eye, exercised on a thousand paintings; tore her voice, her features, her color to shreds. I caught all those tell-tale resemblances to her father and mother by which I knew what she would be like in thirty years’ time. I noted the gleam of gold from a dead tooth in the laughing mouth: I made curious observations of the strange odors of the chemistry of the nerves. The visions of my romantic reveries, in which I had trod the plains of heaven with a deathless, ageless creature of coral and ivory, deserted me in that supreme hour. I remembered them and desperately strove to recover their illusion; but they now seemed the emptiest of inventions: my judgment was not to be corrupted: my brain still said No on every issue. And whilst I was in the act of framing my excuse to the lady, Life seized me and threw me into her arms as a sailor throws a scrap of fish into the mouth of a seabird.
    423
   
  THE STATUE. You might as well have gone without thinking such a lot about it, Juan. You are like all the clever men; you have more brains than is good for you.
    424
   
  THE DEVIL. And were you not the happier for the experience, Señor Don Juan?
    425
   
  DON JUAN. The happier, no: the wiser, yes. That moment introduced me for the first time to myself, and, through myself, to the world. I saw then how useless it is to attempt to impose conditions on the irresistible force of Life; to preach prudence, careful selection, virtue, honor, chastity—
    426
   
  ANA. Don Juan: a word against chastity is an insult to me.
    427
   
  DON JUAN. I say nothing against your chastity, Señora, since it took the form of a husband and twelve children. What more could you have done had you been the most abandoned of women?
    428
   
  ANA. I could have had twelve husbands and no children: thats what I could have done, Juan. And let me tell you that that would have made all the difference to the earth which I replenished.
    429
   
  THE STATUE. Bravo Ana! Juan: you are floored, quelled, annihilated.
    430
   
  DON JUAN. No: for though that difference is the true essential difference—Doña Ana has, I admit, gone straight to the real point—yet it is not a difference of love or chastity, or even constancy; for twelve children by twelve different husbands would have replenished the earth perhaps more effectively. Suppose my friend Ottavio had died when you were thirty, you would never have remained a widow: you were too beautiful. Suppose the successor of Ottavio had died when you were forty, you would still have been irresistible; and a woman who marries twice marries three times if she becomes free to do so. Twelve lawful children borne by one highly respectable lady to three different fathers is not impossible nor condemned by public opinion. That such a lady may be more law abiding than the poor girl whom we used to spurn into the gutter for bearing one unlawful infant is no doubt true; but dare you say she is less self-indulgent?
    431
   
  ANA. She is more virtuous: that is enough for me.
    432
   
  DON JUAN. In that case, what is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married? Let us face the facts, dear Ana. The Life Force respects marriage only because marriage is a contrivance of its own to secure the greatest number of children and the closest care of them. For honor, chastity, and all the rest of your moral figments it cares not a rap. Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions—
    433
   
  ANA. Juan!
    434
   
  THE STATUE [protesting] Really!—
    435
   
  DON JUAN [determinedly] I say the most licentious of human institutions: that is the secret of its popularity. And a woman seeking a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of prey. The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error. Come, Ana! do not look shocked: you know better than any of us that marriage is a mantrap baited with simulated accomplishments and delusive idealizations. When your sainted mother, by dint of scoldings and punishments, forced you to learn how to play half a dozen pieces on the spinet—which she hated as much as you did—had she any other purpose than to delude your suitors into the belief that your husband would have in his home an angel who would fill it with melody, or at least play him to sleep after dinner? You married my friend Ottavio: well, did you ever open the spinet from the hour when the Church united him to you?
    436
   
  ANA. You are a fool, Juan. A young married woman has something else to do than sit at the spinet without any support for her back; so she gets out of the habit of playing.
    437
   
  DON JUAN. Not if she loves music. No: believe me, she only throws away the bait when the bird is in the net.
    438
   
  ANA [bitterly] And men, I suppose, never throw off the mask when their bird is in the net. The husband never becomes negligent, selfish, brutal—oh, never!
    439
   
  DON JUAN. What do these recriminations prove, Ana? Only that the hero is as gross an imposture as the heroine.
    440
   
  ANA. It is all nonsense: most marriages are perfectly comfortable.
    441
   
  DON JUAN. “Perfectly” is a strong expression, Ana. What you mean is that sensible people make the best of one another. Send me to the galleys and chain me to the felon whose number happens to be next before mine; and I must accept the inevitable and make the best of the companionship. Many such companionships, they tell me, are touchingly affectionate; and most are at least tolerably friendly. But that does not make a chain a desirable ornament nor the galleys an abode of bliss. Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
    442
   
  ANA. At all events, let me take an old woman’s privilege again, and tell you flatly that marriage peoples the world and debauchery does not.
    443
   
  DON JUAN. How if a time come when this shall cease to be true? Do you not know that where there is a will there is a way? that whatever Man really wishes to do he will finally discover a means of doing? Well, you have done your best, you virtuous ladies, and others of your way of thinking, to bend Man’s mind wholly towards honorable love as the highest good, and to understand by honorable love, romance and beauty and happiness in the possession of beautiful, refined, delicate, affectionate women. You have taught women to value their own youth, health, shapeliness, and refinement above all things. Well, what place have squalling babies and household cares in this exquisite paradise of the senses and emotions? Is it not the inevitable end of it all that the human will shall say to the human brain: Invent me a means by which I can have love, beauty, romance, emotion, passion, without their wretched penalties, their expenses, their worries, their trials, their illnesses and agonies and risks of death, their retinue of servants and nurses and doctors and schoolmasters.
    444
   
  THE DEVIL. All this, Señor Don Juan, is realized here in my realm.
    445
   
  DON JUAN. Yes, at the cost of death. Man will not take it at that price: he demands the romantic delights of your hell whilst he is still on earth. Well, the means will be found: the brain will not fail when the will is in earnest. The day is coming when great nations will find their numbers dwindling from census to census; when the six roomed villa will rise in price above the family mansion; when the viciously reckless poor and the stupidly pious rich will delay the extinction of the race only by degrading it; whilst the boldly prudent, the thriftily selfish and ambitious, the imaginative and poetic, the lovers of money and solid comfort, the worshippers of success, of art, and of love, will all oppose to the Force of Life the device of sterility.
    446
   
  THE STATUE. That is all very eloquent, my young friend; but if you had lived to Ana’s age, or even to mine, you would have learned that the people who get rid of the fear of poverty and children and all the other family troubles, and devote themselves to having a good time of it, only leave their minds free for the fear of old age and ugliness and impotence and death. The childless laborer is more tormented by his wife’s idleness and her constant demands for amusement and distraction than he could be by twenty children; and his wife is more wretched than he. I have had my share of vanity; for as a young man I was admired by women; and as a statue I am praised by art critics. But I confess that had I found nothing to do in the world but wallow in these delights I should have cut my throat. When I married Ana’s mother—or perhaps, to be strictly correct, I should rather say when I at last gave in and allowed Ana’s mother to marry me—I knew that I was planting thorns in my pillow, and that marriage for me, a swaggering young officer thitherto unvanquished, meant defeat and capture.
    447
   
  ANA [scandalized] Father!
    448
   
  THE STATUE. I am sorry to shock you, my love; but since Juan has stripped every rag of decency from the discussion I may as well tell the frozen truth.
    449
   
  ANA. Hmf! I suppose I was one of the thorns.
    450
   
  THE STATUE. By no means: you were often a rose. You see, your mother had most of the trouble you gave.
    451
   
  DON JUAN. Then may I ask, Commander, why you have left Heaven to come here and wallow, as you express it, in sentimental beatitudes which you confess would once have driven you to cut your throat?
    452
   
  THE STATUE [struck by this] Egad, thats true.
    453
   
  THE DEVIL [alarmed] What! You are going back from your word! [To Don Juan] And all your philosophizing has been nothing but a mask for proselytizing! [To the Statue] Have you forgotten already the hideous dulness from which I am offering you a refuge here? [To Don Juan] And does your demonstration of the approaching sterilization and extinction of mankind lead to anything better than making the most of those pleasures of art and love which you yourself admit refined you, elevated you, developed you?
    454
   
  DON JUAN. I never demonstrated the extinction of mankind. Life cannot will its own extinction either in its blind amorphous state or in any of the forms into which it has organized itself. I had not finished when His Excellency interrupted me.
    455
   
  THE STATUE. I begin to doubt whether you ever will finish, my friend. You are extremely fond of hearing yourself talk.
    456
   
  DON JUAN. True; but since you have endured so much, you may as well endure to the end. Long before this sterilization which I described becomes more than a clearly foreseen possibility, the reaction will begin. The great central purpose of breeding the race: ay, breeding it to heights now deemed superhuman: that purpose which is now hidden in a mephitic cloud of love and romance and prudery and fastidiousness, will break through into clear sunlight as a purpose no longer to be confused with the gratification of personal fancies, the impossible realization of boys’ and girls’ dreams of bliss, or the need of older people for companionship or money. The plain-spoken marriage services of the vernacular Churches will no longer be abbreviated and half suppressed as indelicate. The sober decency, earnestness, and authority of their declaration of the real purpose of marriage will be honored and accepted, whilst their romantic vowings and pledgings and until-death-do-us-partings and the like will be expunged as unbearable frivolities. Do my sex the justice to admit, Señora, that we have always recognized that the sex relation is not a personal or friendly relation at all.
    457
   
  ANA. Not a personal or friendly relation! What relation is more personal? more sacred? more holy?
    458
   
  DON JUAN. Sacred and holy, if you like, Ana, but not personally friendly. Your relation to God is sacred and holy: dare you call it personally friendly? In the sex relation the universal creative energy, of which the parties are both the helpless agents, over-rides and sweeps away all personal considerations, and dispenses with all personal relations. The pair may be utter strangers to one another, speaking different languages, differing in race and color, in age and disposition, with no bond between them but a possibility of that fecundity for the sake of which the Life Force throws them into one another’s arms at the exchange of a glance. Do we not recognize this by allowing marriages to be made by parents without consulting the woman? Have you not often expressed your disgust at the immorality of the English nation, in which women and men of noble birth become acquainted and court each other like peasants? And how much does even the peasant know of his bride or she of him before he engages himself? Why, you would not make a man your lawyer or your family doctor on so slight an acquaintance as you would fall in love with and marry him!
    459
   
  ANA. Yes, Juan: we know the libertine’s philosophy. Always ignore the consequences to the woman.
    460
   
  DON JUAN. The consequences, yes: they justify her fierce grip of the man. But surely you do not call that attachment a sentimental one. As well call the policeman’s attachment to his prisoner a love relation.
    461
   
  ANA. You see you have to confess that marriage is necessary, though, according to you, love is the slightest of all human relations.
    462
   
  DON JUAN. How do you know that it is not the greatest of all human relations? far too great to be a personal matter. Could your father have served his country if he had refused to kill any enemy of Spain unless he personally hated him? Can a woman serve her country if she refuses to marry any man she does not personally love? You know it is not so: the woman of noble birth marries as the man of noble birth fights, on political and family grounds, not on personal ones.
    463
   
  THE STATUE [impressed] A very clever point that, Juan: I must think it over. You are really full of ideas. How did you come to think of this one?
    464
   
  DON JUAN. I learnt it by experience. When I was on earth, and made those proposals to ladies which, though universally condemned, have made me so interesting a hero of legend, I was not infrequently met in some such way as this. The lady would say that she would countenance my advances, provided they were honorable. On inquiring what that proviso meant, I found that it meant that I proposed to get possession of her property if she had any, or to undertake her support for life if she had not; that I desired her continual companionship, counsel, and conversation to the end of my days, and would take a most solemn oath to be always enraptured by them above all, that I would turn my back on all other women for ever for her sake. I did not object to these conditions because they were exorbitant and inhuman: it was their extraordinary irrelevance that prostrated me. I invariably replied with perfect frankness that I had never dreamt of any of these things; that unless the lady’s character and intellect were equal or superior to my own, her conversation must degrade and her counsel mislead me; that her constant companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious to me; that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in advance, much less to the end of my life; that to cut me off from all natural and unconstrained intercourse with half my fellow creatures would narrow and warp me if I submitted to it, and, if not, would bring me under the curse of clandestinity; that, finally, my proposals to her were wholly unconnected with any of these matters, and were the outcome of a perfectly simple impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.
    465
   
  ANA. You mean that it was an immoral impulse.
    466
   
  DON JUAN. Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush for it; but I cannot help it. Nature is a pandar, Time a wrecker, and Death a murderer. I have always preferred to stand up to those facts and build institutions on their recognition. You prefer to propitiate the three devils by proclaiming their chastity, their thrift, and their loving kindness; and to base your institutions on these flatteries. Is it any wonder that the institutions do not work smoothly?
    467
   
  THE STATUE. What used the ladies to say, Juan?
    468
   
  DON JUAN. Oh come! Confidence for confidence. First tell me what you used to say to the ladies.
    469
   
  THE STATUE. I! Oh, I swore that I would be faithful to the death; that I should die if they refused me; that no woman could ever be to me what she was—
    470
   
  ANA. She! Who?
    471
   
  THE STATUE. Whoever it happened to be at the time, my dear. I had certain things I always said. One of them was that even when I was eighty, one white hair of the woman I loved would make me tremble more than the thickest gold tress from the most beautiful young head. Another was that I could not bear the thought of anyone else being the mother of my children.
    472
   
  DON JUAN [revolted] You old rascal!
    473
   
  THE STATUE [stoutly] Not a bit; for I really believed it with all my soul at the moment. I had a heart: not like you. And it was this sincerity that made me successful.
    474
   
  DON JUAN. Sincerity! To be fool enough to believe a ramping, stamping, thumping lie: that is what you call sincerity! To be so greedy for a woman that you deceive yourself in your eagerness to deceive her: sincerity, you call it!
    475
   
  THE STATUE. Oh damn your sophistries! I was a man in love, not a lawyer. And the women loved me for it, bless them!
    476
   
  DON JUAN. They made you think so. What will you say when I tell you that though I played the lawyer so callously, they made me think so too? I also had my moments of infatuation in which I gushed nonsense and believed it. Sometimes the desire to give pleasure by saying beautiful things so rose in me on the flood of emotion that I said them recklessly. At other times I argued against myself with a devilish coldness that drew tears. But I found it just as hard to escape when I was cruel as when I was kind. When the lady’s instinct was set on me, there was nothing for it but lifelong servitude or flight.
    477
   
  ANA. You dare boast, before me and my father, that every woman found you irresistible.
    478
   
  DON JUAN. Am I boasting? It seems to me that I cut the most pitiable of figures. Besides, I said “when the lady’s instinct was set on me.” It was not always so; and then, heavens! what transports of virtuous indignation! what overwhelming defiance to the dastardly seducer! what scenes of Imogen and Iachimo!
    479
   
  ANA. I made no scenes. I simply called my father.
    480
   
  DON JUAN. And he came, sword in hand, to vindicate outraged honor and morality by murdering me.
    481
   
  THE STATUE. Murdering! What do you mean? Did I kill you or did you kill me?
    482
   
  DON JUAN. Which of us was the better fencer?
    483
   
  THE STATUE. I was.
    484
   
  DON JUAN. Of course you were. And yet you, the hero of those scandalous adventures you have just been relating to us, you had the effrontery to pose as the avenger of outraged morality and condemn me to death! You would have slain me but for an accident.
    485
   
  THE STATUE. I was expected to, Juan. That is how things were arranged on earth. I was not a social reformer; and I always did what it was customary for a gentleman to do.
    486
   
  DON JUAN. That may account for your attacking me, but not for the revolting hypocrisy of your subsequent proceedings as a statue.
    487
   
  THE STATUE. That all came of my going to Heaven.
    488
   
  THE DEVIL. I still fail to see, Señor Don Juan, that these episodes in your earthly career and in that of the Señor Commander in any way discredit my view of life. Here, I repeat, you have all that you sought without anything that you shrank from.
    489
   
  DON JUAN. On the contrary, here I have everything that disappointed me without anything that I have not already tried and found wanting. I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it. That is the law of my life. That is the working within me of Life’s incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper, intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-understanding. It was the supremacy of this purpose that reduced love for me to the mere pleasure of a moment, art for me to the mere schooling of my faculties, religion for me to a mere excuse for laziness, since it had set up a God who looked at the world and saw it was good, against the instinct in me that looked through my eyes at the world and saw that it could be improved. I tell you that in the pursuit of my own pleasure, my own health, my own fortune, I have never known happiness. It was not love for Woman that delivered me into her hands: it was fatigue, exhaustion. When I was a child, and bruised my head against a stone, I ran to the nearest woman and cried away my pain against her apron. When I grew up, and bruised my soul against the brutalities and stupidities with which I had to strive, I did again just what I had done as a child. I have enjoyed, too, my rests, my recuperations, my breathing times, my very prostrations after strife; but rather would I be dragged through all the circles of the foolish Italian’s Inferno than through the pleasures of Europe. That is what has made this place of eternal pleasures so deadly to me. It is the absence of this instinct in you that makes you that strange monster called a Devil. It is the success with which you have diverted the attention of men from their real purpose, which in one degree or another is the same as mine, to yours, that has earned you the name of The Tempter. It is the fact that they are doing your will, or rather drifting with your want of will, instead of doing their own, that makes them the uncomfortable, false, restless, artificial, petulant, wretched creatures they are.
    490
   
  THE DEVIL [mortified] Señor Don Juan: you are uncivil to my friends.
    491
   
  DON JUAN. Pooh! why should I be civil to them or to you? In this Palace of Lies a truth or two will not hurt you. Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only “frail.” They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.
    492
   
  THE STATUE. Your flow of words is simply amazing, Juan. How I wish I could have talked like that to my soldiers.
    493
   
  THE DEVIL. It is mere talk, though. It has all been said before; but what change has it ever made? What notice has the world ever taken of it?
    494
   
  DON JUAN. Yes, it is mere talk. But why is it mere talk? Because, my friend, beauty, purity, respectability, religion, morality, art, patriotism, bravery, and the rest are nothing but words which I or anyone else can turn inside out like a glove. Were they realities, you would have to plead guilty to my indictment; but fortunately for your self-respect, my diabolical friend, they are not realities. As you say, they are mere words, useful for duping barbarians into adopting civilization, or the civilized poor into submitting to be robbed and enslaved. That is the family secret of the governing caste; and if we who are of that caste aimed at more Life for the world instead of at more power and luxury for our miserable selves, that secret would make us great. Now, since I, being a nobleman, am in the secret too, think how tedious to me must be your unending cant about all these moralistic figments, and how squalidly disastrous your sacrifice of your lives to them! If you even believed in your moral game enough to play it fairly, it would be interesting to watch; but you dont: you cheat at every trick; and if your opponent outcheats you, you upset the table and try to murder him.
    495
   
  THE DEVIL. On earth there may be some truth in this, because the people are uneducated and cannot appreciate my religion of love and beauty; but here—
    496
   
  DON JUAN. Oh yes: I know. Here there is nothing but love and beauty. Ugh! it is like sitting for all eternity at the first act of a fashionable play, before the complications begin. Never in my worst moments of superstitious terror on earth did I dream that hell was so horrible. I live, like a hair-dresser, in the continual contemplation of beauty, toying with silken tresses. I breathe an atmosphere of sweetness, like a confectioner’s shopboy. Commander: are there any beautiful women in Heaven?
    497
   
  THE STATUE. None. Absolutely none. All dowdies. Not two pennorth of jewellery among a dozen of them. They might be men of fifty.
    498
   
  DON JUAN. I am impatient to get there. Is the word beauty ever mentioned; and are there any artistic people?
    499
   
  THE STATUE. I give you my word they wont admire a fine statue even when it walks past them.
    500
   
  DON JUAN. I go.
    501
   
  THE DEVIL. Don Juan: shall I be frank with you?
    502
   
  DON JUAN. Were you not so before?
    503
   
  THE DEVIL. As far as I went, yes. But I will now go further, and confess to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving. But when you are as old as I am; when you have a thousand times wearied of heaven, like myself and the Commander, and a thousand times wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no longer imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation, every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see reform, progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual ascent by Man on the stepping stones of his dead selves to higher things, you will see nothing but an infinite comedy of illusion. You will discover the profound truth of the saying of my friend Koheleth, that there is nothing new under the sun. Vanitas vanitatum—
    504
   
  DON JUAN [out of all patience] By Heaven, this is worse than your cant about love and beauty. Clever dolt that you are, is a man no better than a worm, or a dog than a wolf, because he gets tired of everything? Shall he give up eating because he destroys his appetite in the act of gratifying it? Is a field idle when it is fallow? Can the Commander expend his hellish energy here without accumulating heavenly energy for his next term of blessedness? Granted that the great Life Force has hit on the device of the clock-maker’s pendulum, and uses the earth for its bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel to us the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation repeated; nay more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time the sun throws off the earth and catches it again a thousand times as a circus rider throws up a ball, and that the total of all our epochs is but the moments between the toss and the catch, has the colossal mechanism no purpose?
    505
   
  THE DEVIL. None, my friend. You think, because you have a purpose, Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have fingers and toes because you have them.
    506
   
  DON JUAN. But I should not have them if they served no purpose. And I, my friend am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part of me. If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword and the mandoline, my brain is the organ by which Nature strives to understand itself. My dog’s brain serves only my dog’s purposes; but my own brain labors at a knowledge which does nothing for me personally but make my body bitter to me and my decay and death a calamity. Were I not possessed with a purpose beyond my own I had better be a ploughman than a philosopher; for the ploughman lives as long as the philosopher, eats more, sleeps better, and rejoices in the wife of his bosom with less misgiving. This is because the philosopher is in the grip of the Life Force. This Life Force says to him “I have done a thousand wonderful things unconsciously by merely willing to live and following the line of least resistance: now I want to know myself and my destination, and choose my path; so I have made a special brain—a philosopher’s brain—to grasp this knowledge for me as the husbandman’s hand grasps the plough for me. And this” says the Life Force to the philosopher “must thou strive to do for me until thou diest, when I will make another brain and another philosopher to carry on the work.”