第34章

Mayn't I have just one dance with you? C a n you dance? (Phil, resuming his part of harlequin, waves his hat as if casting a spell on them.)BOHUN (thunderously).Yes: you think I can't; but I can.Come along.(He seizes her and dances off with her through the window in a most powerful manner, but with studied propriety and grace.The waiter is meanwhile busy putting the chairs back in their customary places.)PHILIP."On with the dance: let joy be unconfined." William!

WAITER.Yes, sir.

PHILIP.Can you procure a couple of dominos and false noses for my father and Mr.McComas?

McCOMAS.Most certainly not.I protest---CRAMPTON.No, no.What harm will it do, just for once, McComas?

Don't let us be spoil-sports.

McCOMAS.Crampton: you are not the man I took you for.(Pointedly.)Bullies are always cowards.(He goes disgustedly towards the window.)CRAMPTON (following him).Well, never mind.We must indulge them a little.Can you get us something to wear, waiter?

WAITER.Certainly, sir.(He precedes them to the window, and stands aside there to let them pass out before him.) This way, sir.Dominos and noses, sir?

McCOMAS (angrily, on his way out).I shall wear my own nose.

WAITER (suavely).Oh, dear, yes, sir: the false one will fit over it quite easily, sir: plenty of room, sir, plenty of room.(He goes out after McComas.)CRAMPTON (turning at the window to Phil with an attempt at genial fatherliness).Come along, my boy, come along.(He goes.)PHILIP (cheerily, following him).Coming, dad, coming.(On the window threshold, he stops; looking after Crampton; then turns fantastically with his bat bent into a halo round his head, and says with a lowered voice to Mrs.Clandon and Gloria) Did you feel the pathos of that? (He vanishes.)MRS.CLANDON (left alone with Gloria).Why did Mr.Valentine go away so suddenly, I wonder?

GLORIA (petulantly).I don't know.Yes, I d o know.Let us go and see the dancing.(They go towards the window, and are met by Valentine, who comes in from the garden walking quickly, with his face set and sulky.)VALENTINE (stiffly).Excuse me.I thought the party had quite broken up.

GLORIA (nagging).Then why did you come back?

VALENTINE.I came back because I am penniless.I can't get out that way without a five shilling ticket.

MRS.CLANDON.Has anything annoyed you, Mr.Valentine?

GLORIA.Never mind him, mother.This is a fresh insult to me: that is all.

MRS.CLANDON (hardly able to realize that Gloria is deliberately provoking an altercation).Gloria!

VALENTINE.Mrs.Clandon: have I said anything insulting? Have Idone anything insulting?

GLORIA.you have implied that my past has been like yours.That is the worst of insults.

VALENTINE.I imply nothing of the sort.I declare that my past has been blameless in comparison with yours.

MRS.CLANDON (most indignantly).Mr.Valentine!

VALENTINE.Well, what am I to think when I learn that Miss Clandon has made exactly the same speeches to other men that she has made to me---when I hear of at least five former lovers, with a tame naval lieutenant thrown in? Oh, it's too bad.

MRS.CLANDON.But you surely do not believe that these affairs---mere jokes of the children's---were serious, Mr.Valentine?

VALENTINE.Not to you---not to her, perhaps.But I know what the men felt.(With ludicrously genuine earnestness.) Have you ever thought of the wrecked lives, the marriages contracted in the recklessness of despair, the suicides, the---the---the---GLORIA (interrupting him contemptuously).Mother: this man is a sentimental idiot.(She sweeps away to the fireplace.)MRS.CLANDON (shocked).Oh, my d e a r e s t Gloria, Mr.Valentine will think that rude.

VALENTINE.I am not a sentimental idiot.I am cured of sentiment for ever.(He sits down in dudgeon.)MRS.CLANDON.Mr.Valentine: you must excuse us all.Women have to unlearn the false good manners of their slavery before they acquire the genuine good manners of their freedom.Don't think Gloria vulgar (Gloria turns, astonished): she is not really so.

GLORIA.Mother! You apologize for me to h i m!

MRS.CLANDON.My dear: you have some of the faults of youth as well as its qualities; and Mr.Valentine seems rather too old fashioned in his ideas about his own sex to like being called an idiot.And now had we not better go and see what Dolly is doing? (She goes towards the window.Valentine rises.)GLORIA.Do you go, mother.I wish to speak to Mr.Valentine alone.

MRS.CLANDON (startled into a remonstrance).My dear! (Recollecting herself.) I beg your pardon, Gloria.Certainly, if you wish.(She bows to Valentine and goes out.)VALENTINE.Oh, if your mother were only a widow! She's worth six of you.

GLORIA.That is the first thing I have heard you say that does you honor.

VALENTINE.Stuff! Come: say what you want to say and let me go.

GLORIA.I have only this to say.You dragged me down to your level for a moment this afternoon.Do you think, if that had ever happened before, that I should not have been on my guard---that I should not have known what was coming, and known my own miserable weakness?

VALENTINE (scolding at her passionately).Don't talk of it in that way.What do I care for anything in you but your weakness, as you call it? You thought yourself very safe, didn't you, behind your advanced ideas! I amused myself by upsetting t h e m pretty easily.

GLORIA (insolently, feeling that now she can do as she likes with him).Indeed!

VALENTINE.But why did I do it? Because I was being tempted to awaken your heart---to stir the depths in you.Why was I tempted?