Misalliance

How ruthlessly cruel! Hypatia Stuff! It’s only that you’re tired of a great many things I’ve never tried. Lord Summerhays It’s not alone that. I’ve not forgotten the brutality of my own boyhood. But do try to learn, glorious young beast that you are, that age is squeamish, sentimental, fastidious. If you can’t understand my holier feelings, at least you know the bodily infirmities of the old. You know that I daren’t eat all the rich things you gobble up at every meal; that I can’t bear the noise and racket and clatter that affect you no more than they affect a stone. Well, my soul is like that too. Spare it: be gentle with it. He involuntarily puts out his hands to plead: she takes them with a laugh. If you could possibly think of me as half an angel and half an invalid, we should get on much better together. Hypatia We get on very well, I think. Nobody else ever called me a glorious young beast. I like that. Glorious young beast expresses exactly what I like to be. Lord Summerhays Extricating his hands and sitting down. Where on earth did you get these morbid tastes? You seem to have been well brought up in a normal, healthy, respectable, middle-class family. Yet you go on like the most unwholesome product of the rankest Bohemianism. Hypatia That’s just it. I’m fed up with⁠— Lord Summerhays Horrible expression. Don’t. Hypatia Oh, I daresay it’s vulgar; but there’s no other word for it. I’m fed up with nice things: with respectability, with propriety! When a woman has nothing to do, money and respectability mean that nothing is ever allowed to happen to her. I don’t want to be good; and I don’t want to be bad: I just don’t want to be bothered about either good or bad: I want to be an active verb. Lord Summerhays An active verb? Oh, I see. An active verb signifies to be, to do, or to suffer. Hypatia Just so: how clever of you! I want to be; I want to do; and I’m game to suffer if it costs that. But stick here doing nothing but being good and nice and ladylike I simply won’t. Stay down here with us for a week; and I’ll show you what it means: show it to you going on day after day, year after year, lifetime after lifetime. Lord Summerhays Show me what? Hypatia Girls withering into ladies. Ladies withering into old maids. Nursing old women. Running errands for old men. Good for nothing else at last. Oh, you can’t imagine the fiendish selfishness of the old people and the maudlin sacrifice of the young. It’s more unbearable than any poverty: more horrible than any regular-right-down wickedness. Oh, home! home! parents! family! duty! how I loathe them! How I’d like to see them all blown to bits! The poor escape. The wicked escape. Well, I can’t be poor: we’re rolling in money: it’s no use pretending we’re not. But I can be wicked; and I’m quite prepared to be. Lord Summerhays You think that easy? Hypatia Well, isn’t it? Being a man, you ought to know. Lord Summerhays It requires some natural talent, which can no doubt be cultivated. It’s not really easy to be anything out of the common. Hypatia Anyhow, I mean to make a fight for living. Lord Summerhays Living your own life, I believe the Suffragist phrase is. Hypatia Living any life. Living, instead of withering without even a gardener to snip you off when you’re rotten. Lord Summerhays I’ve lived an active life; but I’ve withered all the same. Hypatia No: you’ve worn out: that’s quite different. And you’ve some life in you yet or you wouldn’t have fallen in love with me. You can never imagine how delighted I was to find that instead of being the correct sort of big panjandrum you were supposed to be, you were really an old rip like papa. Lord Summerhays No, no: not about your father: I really can’t bear it. And if you must say these terrible things: these heart-wounding shameful things, at least find something prettier to call me than an old rip. Hypatia Well, what would you call a man proposing to a girl who might be⁠— Lord Summerhays His daughter: yes, I know. Hypatia I was going to say his granddaughter. Lord Summerhays You always have one more blow to get in. Hypatia You’re too sensitive. Did you ever make mud pies when you were a kid⁠—beg pardon: a child. Lord Summerhays I hope not. Hypatia It’s a dirty job; but Johnny and I were vulgar enough to like it. I like young people because they’re not too afraid of dirt to live. I’ve grown out of the mud pies; but I like slang; and I like bustling you up by saying things that shock you; and I’d rather put up with swearing and smoking than with dull respectability; and there are lots of things that would just shrivel you up that I think rather jolly. Now! Lord Summerhays I’ve not the slightest doubt of it. Don’t insist. Hypatia It’s not your ideal, is it? Lord Summerhays No. Hypatia Shall I tell you why? Your ideal is an old woman. I daresay she’s got a young face; but she’s an old woman. Old, old, old. Squeamish. Can’t stand up to things. Can’t enjoy things: not real things. Always on the shrink. Lord Summerhays On the shrink! Detestable expression. Hypatia Bah! you can’t stand even a little thing like that. What good are you? Oh, what good are you? Lord Summerhays Don’t ask me. I don’t know. I don’t know. Tarleton returns from the vestibule. Hypatia sits down demurely. Hypatia Well, papa: have you meditated on your destiny? Tarleton Puzzled. What? Oh! my destiny. Gad, I forgot all about it: Jock started a rabbit and put it clean out of my head. Besides, why should I give way to morbid introspection? It’s a sign of madness. Read Lombroso. To Lord Summerhays. Well, Summerhays, has my little girl been entertaining you? Lord Summerhays Yes. She is a wonderful entertainer. Tarleton I think