Man and Superman and Three Other Plays (69 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MALONE No: she must be born to it.

VIOLET Hector was not born to it, was he?

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

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

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

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

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

VIOLET The Famine?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MALONE Somebody like you, perhaps?

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

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

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

MALONE
[half bewildered]
I don't wish to take any unfair advantage; but we seem to have got off the straight track somehow.
STRAKER, with the air of a man who has been making haste, opens the little gate, and admits HECTOR, who, snorting with indignation, comes upon the lawn, and is making for his father when VIOLET, greatly dismayed, springs up and intercepts him. STRAKER does not wait; at least he does not remain visibly within earshot.

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

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

MALONE Hwat d‘y'mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MALONE [
furiously clenching his fists
] Hector—

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

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

VIOLET Ssh! please, please. Here they all come.
Father and son, checked, glare mutely at one another as TANNER comes in through the little gate with RAMSDEN, followed by OCTAVIUS and ANN.

VIOLET Back already!

TANNER The Alhambra is not open this afternoon.

VIOLET What a sell!

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

TANNER Have you recovered too, Malone?

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

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

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

VIOLET Oh please don't make a scene.

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

HECTOR I'm very sorry, Miss Robinson; but I'm contending for a principle. I am a son, and, I hope, a dutiful one; but before everything I'm a Man!!! And when dad treats my private letters as his own, and takes it on himself to say that I shan't marry you if I am happy and fortunate enough to gain your consent, then I just snap my fingers and go my own way.

TANNER Marry Violet!

RAMSDEN Are you in your senses?

TANNER Do you forget what we told you?

HECTOR [
recklessly
] I don't care what you told me.

RAMSDEN [
scandalized
] Tut tut, sir! Monstrous! [
he flings away towards the gate, his elbows quivering with indignation
]
.

TANNER Another madman! These men in love should be locked up.
[He gives HECTOR up as hopeless, and turns away towards the garden; but MALONE, taking offence in a new direction, follows him and compels him, by the aggressiveness of his tone, to stop].

MALONE I don't understand this. Is Hector not good enough for this lady, pray?

TANNER My dear sir, the lady is married already. Hector knows it; and yet he persists in his infatuation. Take him home and lock him up.

MALONE
[bitterly]
So this is the high-born social tone I've spoilt be me ignorant, uncultivated behavior! Makin love to a married woman!
[He comes angrily between HECTOR and VIOLET, and almost bawls into HECTOR's left ear]
You've picked up that habit of the British aristocracy, have you?

HECTOR That's all right. Don't you trouble yourself about that. I'll answer for the morality of what I'm doing.

TANNER [
coming forward to HECTOR's right hand with, flashing eyes
] Well said, Malone! You also see that mere marriage laws are not morality! I agree with you; but unfortunately Violet does not.

MALONE I take leave to doubt that, sir. [
Turning on VIOLET
] Let me tell you, Mrs. Robinson, or whatever your right name is, you had no right to send that letter to my son when you were the wife of another man.

HECTOR [
outraged
] This is the last straw. Dad: you have insulted my wife.

MALONE Your wife!

TANNER You the missing husband! Another moral impostor!
[He smites his brow, and collapses into MALONE's chair].

MALONE You've married without my consent!

RAMSDEN You have deliberately humbugged us, sir!

HECTOR Here: I have had just about enough of being badgered. Violet and I are married: that's the long and the short of it. Now what have you got to say—any of you?

MALONE I know what I've got to say. She's married a beggar.

HECTOR No; she's married a Worker
[his American pronunciation imparts an overwhelming intensity to this simple and unpopular word].

I start to earn my own living this very afternoon.

MALONE
[sneering angrily]
Yes: you're very plucky now, because you got your remittance from me yesterday or this morning, I reckon; Wait til it's spent. You won't be so full of cheek then.

HECTOR [
producing a letter from his pocketbook
] Here it is [
thrusting it on his father
]. Now you just take your remittance and yourself out of my life. I'm done with remittances; and I'm done with you. I don't sell the privilege of insulting my wife for a thousand dollars.

MALONE [
deeply wounded and full of concern
] Hector: you don't know what poverty is.

HECTOR [
fervidly
] Well, I want to know what it is. I want‘be a Man. Violet: you come along with me, to your own home: I'll see you through.