Misalliance

to relieve his restlessness, and stares out with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. Hypatia Thoughtful. Bentley: couldn’t you invite your friend Mr. Percival down here? Bentley Not if I know it. You’d throw me over the moment you set eyes on him. Mrs. Tarleton Oh, Bunny! For shame! Bentley Well, who’d marry me, d’you suppose, if they could get my brains with a full-sized body? No, thank you. I shall take jolly good care to keep Joey out of this until Hypatia is past praying for. Johnny and Lord Summerhays return through the pavilion from their stroll. Tarleton Welcome! welcome! Why have you stayed away so long? Lord Summerhays Shaking hands. Yes: I should have come sooner. But I’m still rather lost in England. Johnny takes his hat and hangs it up beside his own. Thank you. Johnny returns to his swing and his novel. Lord Summerhays comes to the writing table. The fact is that as I’ve nothing to do, I never have time to go anywhere. He sits down next Mrs. Tarleton. Tarleton Following him and sitting down on his left. Paradox, paradox. Good. Paradoxes are the only truths. Read Chesterton. But there’s lots for you to do here. You have a genius for government. You learnt your job out there in Jinghiskahn. Well, we want to be governed here in England. Govern us. Lord Summerhays Ah yes, my friend; but in Jinghiskahn you have to govern the right way. If you don’t, you go under and come home. Here everything has to be done the wrong way, to suit governors who understand nothing but partridge shooting (our English native princes, in fact) and voters who don’t know what they’re voting about. I don’t understand these democratic games; and I’m afraid I’m too old to learn. What can I do but sit in the window of my club, which consists mostly of retired Indian Civil servants? We look on at the muddle and the folly and amateurishness; and we ask each other where a single fortnight of it would have landed us. Tarleton Very true. Still, Democracy’s all right, you know. Read Mill. Read Jefferson. Lord Summerhays Yes. Democracy reads well; but it doesn’t act well, like some people’s plays. No, no, my friend Tarleton: to make Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy. You’ve got neither; and there’s an end of it. Tarleton Still, you know, the superman may come. The superman’s an idea. I believe in ideas. Read Whatshisname. Lord Summerhays Reading is a dangerous amusement, Tarleton. I wish I could persuade your free library people of that. Tarleton Why, man, it’s the beginning of education. Lord Summerhays On the contrary, it’s the end of it. How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first? Johnny Intercepting his father’s reply by coming out of the swing and taking the floor. Leave it at that. That’s good sense. Anybody on for a game of tennis? Bentley Oh, lets have some more improving conversation. Wouldn’t you rather, Johnny? Johnny If you ask me, no. Tarleton Johnny: you don’t cultivate your mind. You don’t read. Johnny Coming between his mother and Lord Summerhays, book in hand. Yes I do. I bet you what you like that, page for page, I read more than you, though I don’t talk about it so much. Only, I don’t read the same books. I like a book with a plot in it. You like a book with nothing in it but some idea that the chap that writes it keeps worrying, like a cat chasing its own tail. I can stand a little of it, just as I can stand watching the cat for two minutes, say, when I’ve nothing better to do. But a man soon gets fed up with that sort of thing. The fact is, you look on an author as a sort of god. I look on him as a man that I pay to do a certain thing for me. I pay him to amuse me and to take me out of myself and make me forget. Tarleton No. Wrong principle. You want to remember. Read Kipling. “Lest we forget.” Johnny If Kipling wants to remember, let him remember. If he had to run Tarleton’s Underwear, he’d be jolly glad to forget. As he has a much softer job, and wants to keep himself before the public, his cry is, “Don’t you forget the sort of things I’m rather clever at writing about.” Well, I don’t blame him: it’s his business: I should do the same in his place. But what he wants and what I want are two different things. I want to forget; and I pay another man to make me forget. If I buy a book or go to the theatre, I want to forget the shop and forget myself from the moment I go in to the moment I come out. That’s what I pay my money for. And if I find that the author’s simply getting at me the whole time, I consider that he’s obtained my money under false pretences. I’m not a morbid crank: I’m a natural man; and, as such, I don’t like being got at. If a man in my employment did it, I should sack him. If a member of my club did it, I should cut him. If he went too far with it, I should bring his conduct before the committee. I might even punch his head, if it came to that. Well, who and what is an author that he should be privileged to take liberties that are not allowed to other men? Mrs. Tarleton You see, John! What have I always told you? Johnny has as much to say for himself as anybody when he likes. Johnny I’m no fool, mother, whatever some people may fancy. I don’t set up to have as many ideas as the Governor; but what ideas I have are