Misalliance

do you like it? Wouldn’t you rather I damned you? Percival Miss Tarleton⁠— Hypatia Caressingly. Hypatia, Joey. Patsy, if you like. Percival Look here: this is no good. You want to do what you like? Hypatia Don’t you? Percival No. I’ve been too well brought up. I’ve argued all through this thing; and I tell you I’m not prepared to cast off the social bond. It’s like a corset: it’s a support to the figure even if it does squeeze and deform it a bit. I want to be free. Hypatia Well, I’m tempting you to be free. Percival Not at all. Freedom, my good girl, means being able to count on how other people will behave. If every man who dislikes me is to throw a handful of mud in my face, and every woman who likes me is to behave like Potiphar’s wife, then I shall be a slave: the slave of uncertainty: the slave of fear: the worst of all slaveries. How would you like it if every laborer you met in the road were to make love to you? No. Give me the blessed protection of a good stiff conventionality among thoroughly well-brought up ladies and gentlemen. Hypatia Another talker! Men like conventions because men made them. I didn’t make them: I don’t like them: I won’t keep them. Now, what will you do? Percival Bolt. He runs out through the pavilion. Hypatia I’ll catch you. She dashes off in pursuit. During this conversation the head of the scandalized man in the Turkish bath has repeatedly risen from the lunette, with a strong expression of moral shock. It vanishes abruptly as the two turn towards it in their flight. At the same moment Tarleton comes back through the vestibule door, exhausted by severe and unaccustomed exercise. Tarleton Looking after the flying figures with amazement. Hallo, Patsy: what’s up? Another aeroplane? They are far too preoccupied to hear him; and he is left staring after them as they rush away through the garden. He goes to the pavilion door and looks up; but the heavens are empty. His exhaustion disables him from further inquiry. He dabs his brow with his handkerchief, and walks stiffly to the nearest convenient support, which happens to be the Turkish bath. He props himself upon it with his elbow, and covers his eyes with his hand for a moment. After a few sighing breaths, he feels a little better, and uncovers his eyes. The man’s head rises from the lunette a few inches from his nose. He recoils from the bath with a violent start. Oh Lord! My brain’s gone. Calling piteously. Chickabiddy! He staggers down to the writing table. The Man Coming out of the bath, pistol in hand. Another sound; and you’re a dead man. Tarleton Braced. Am I? Well, you’re a live one: that’s one comfort. I thought you were a ghost. He sits down, quite undisturbed by the pistol. Who are you; and what the devil were you doing in my new Turkish bath? The Man With tragic intensity. I am the son of Lucinda Titmus. Tarleton The name conveying nothing to him. Indeed? And how is she? Quite well, I hope, eh? The Man She is dead. Dead, my God! and you’re alive. Tarleton Unimpressed by the tragedy, but sympathetic. Oh! Lost your mother? That’s sad. I’m sorry. But we can’t all have the luck to survive our mothers, and be nursed out of the world by the hands that nursed us into it. The Man Much you care, damn you! Tarleton Oh, don’t cut up rough. Face it like a man. You see I didn’t know your mother; but I’ve no doubt she was an excellent woman. The Man Not know her! Do you dare to stand there by her open grave and deny that you knew her? Tarleton Trying to recollect. What did you say her name was? The Man Lucinda Titmus. Tarleton Well, I ought to remember a rum name like that if I ever heard it. But I don’t. Have you a photograph or anything? The Man Forgotten even the name of your victim! Tarleton Oh! she was my victim, was she? The Man She was. And you shall see her face again before you die, dead as she is. I have a photograph. Tarleton Good. The Man I’ve two photographs. Tarleton Still better. Treasure the mother’s pictures. Good boy! The Man One of them as you knew her. The other as she became when you flung her aside, and she withered into an old woman. Tarleton She’d have done that anyhow, my lad. We all grow old. Look at me! Seeing that the man is embarrassed by his pistol in fumbling for the photographs with his left hand in his breast pocket. Let me hold the gun for you. The Man Retreating to the worktable. Stand back. Do you take me for a fool? Tarleton Well, you’re a little upset, naturally. It does you credit. The Man Look here, upon this picture and on this. He holds out the two photographs like a hand at cards, and points to them with the pistol. Tarleton Good. Read Shakespeare: he has a word for every occasion. He takes the photographs, one in each hand, and looks from one to the other, pleased and interested, but without any sign of recognition. What a pretty girl! Very pretty. I can imagine myself falling in love with her when I was your age. I wasn’t a bad-looking young fellow myself in those days. Looking at the other. Curious that we should both have gone the same way. The Man You and she the same way! What do you mean? Tarleton Both got stout, I mean. The Man Would you have had her deny herself food? Tarleton No: it wouldn’t have been any use. It’s constitutional. No matter how little you eat you put on flesh if you’re made that way. He resumes his study of the earlier photograph. The Man Is that all the feeling that rises in you at the sight of