Misalliance

know what a blackmailer is. I haven’t even that much experience. Lord Summerhays A blackmailer, my dear young lady, is a person who knows a disgraceful secret in the life of another person, and extorts money from that other person by threatening to make his secret public unless the money is paid. Hypatia I haven’t asked you for money. Lord Summerhays No; but you asked me to come down here and talk to you; and you mentioned casually that if I didn’t you’d have nobody to talk about me to but Bentley. That was a threat, was it not? Hypatia Well, I wanted you to come. Lord Summerhays In spite of my age and my unfortunate talkativeness? Hypatia I like talking to you. I can let myself go with you. I can say things to you I can’t say to other people. Lord Summerhays I wonder why? Hypatia Well, you are the only really clever, grown-up, high-class, experienced man I know who has given himself away to me by making an utter fool of himself with me. You can’t wrap yourself up in your toga after that. You can’t give yourself airs with me. Lord Summerhays You mean you can tell Bentley about me if I do. Hypatia Even if there wasn’t any Bentley: even if you didn’t care (and I really don’t see why you should care so much) still, we never could be on conventional terms with one another again. Besides, I’ve got a feeling for you: almost a ghastly sort of love for you. Lord Summerhays Shrinking. I beg you⁠—no, please. Hypatia Oh, it’s nothing at all flattering: and, of course, nothing wrong, as I suppose you’d call it. Lord Summerhays Please believe that I know that. When men of my age⁠— Hypatia Impatiently. Oh, do talk about yourself when you mean yourself, and not about men of your age. Lord Summerhays I’ll put it as bluntly as I can. When, as you say, I made an utter fool of myself, believe me, I made a poetic fool of myself. I was seduced, not by appetites which, thank Heaven, I’ve long outlived: not even by the desire of second childhood for a child companion, but by the innocent impulse to place the delicacy and wisdom and spirituality of my age at the affectionate service of your youth for a few years, at the end of which you would be a grown, strong, formed⁠—widow. Alas, my dear, the delicacy of age reckoned, as usual, without the derision and cruelty of youth. You told me that you didn’t want to be an old man’s nurse, and that you didn’t want to have undersized children like Bentley. It served me right: I don’t reproach you: I was an old fool. But how you can imagine, after that, that I can suspect you of the smallest feeling for me except the inevitable feeling of early youth for late age, or imagine that I have any feeling for you except one of shrinking humiliation, I can’t understand. Hypatia I don’t blame you for falling in love with me. I shall be grateful to you all my life for it, because that was the first time that anything really interesting happened to me. Lord Summerhays Do you mean to tell me that nothing of that kind had ever happened before? that no man had ever⁠— Hypatia Oh, lots. That’s part of the routine of life here: the very dullest part of it. The young man who comes a-courting is as familiar an incident in my life as coffee for breakfast. Of course, he’s too much of a gentleman to misbehave himself; and I’m too much of a lady to let him; and he’s shy and sheepish; and I’m correct and self-possessed; and at last, when I can bear it no longer, I either frighten him off, or give him a chance of proposing, just to see how he’ll do it, and refuse him because he does it in the same silly way as all the rest. You don’t call that an event in one’s life, do you? With you it was different. I should as soon have expected the North Pole to fall in love with me as you. You know I’m only a linen-draper’s daughter when all’s said. I was afraid of you: you, a great man! a lord! and older than my father. And then what a situation it was! Just think of it! I was engaged to your son; and you knew nothing about it. He was afraid to tell you: he brought you down here because he thought if he could throw us together I could get round you because I was such a ripping girl. We arranged it all: he and I. We got Papa and Mamma and Johnny out of the way splendidly; and then Bentley took himself off, and left us⁠—you and me!⁠—to take a walk through the heather and admire the scenery of Hindhead. You never dreamt that it was all a plan: that what made me so nice was the way I was playing up to my destiny as the sweet girl that was to make your boy happy. And then! and then! She rises to dance and clap her hands in her glee. Lord Summerhays Shuddering. Stop, stop. Can no woman understand a man’s delicacy? Hypatia Revelling in the recollection. And then⁠—ha, ha!⁠—you proposed. You! A father! For your son’s girl! Lord Summerhays Stop, I tell you. Don’t profane what you don’t understand. Hypatia That was something happening at last with a vengeance. It was splendid. It was my first peep behind the scenes. If I’d been seventeen I should have fallen in love with you. Even as it is, I feel quite differently towards you from what I do towards other old men. So offering her hand you may kiss my hand if that will be any fun for you. Lord Summerhays Rising and recoiling to the table, deeply revolted. No, no, no. How dare you? She laughs mischievously. How callous youth is! How coarse! How cynical!