No More Learning

So you are Hamlet, I suppose.

TANNER. No: I am only the most impudent person you've ever met. That's
your notion of a thoroughly bad character. When you want to give me a
piece of your mind, you ask yourself, as a just and upright man, what
is the worst you can fairly say of me. Thief, liar, forger, adulterer,
perjurer, glutton, drunkard? Not one of these names fit me. You have
to fall back on my deficiency in shame. Well, I admit it. I even
congratulate myself; for if I were ashamed of my real self, I should
cut as stupid a figure as any of the rest of you. Cultivate a little
impudence, Ramsden; and you will become quite a remarkable man.

RAMSDEN. I have no--

TANNER. You have no desire for that sort of notoriety. Bless you, I knew
that answer would come as well as I know that a box of matches will come
out of an automatic machine when I put a penny in the slot: you would be
ashamed to say anything else.

The crushing retort for which Ramsden has been visibly collecting his
forces is lost for ever; for at this point Octavius returns with Miss
Ann Whitefield and her mother; and Ramsden springs up and hurries to the
door to receive them. Whether Ann is good-looking or not depends upon
your taste; also and perhaps chiefly on your age and sex. To Octavius
she is an enchantingly beautiful woman, in whose presence the world
becomes transfigured, and the puny limits of individual consciousness
are suddenly made infinite by a mystic memory of the whole life of the
race to its beginnings in the east, or even back to the paradise from
which it fell. She is to him the reality of romance, the leaner good
sense of nonsense, the unveiling of his eyes, the freeing of his soul,
the abolition of time, place and circumstance, the etherealization of
his blood into rapturous rivers of the very water of life itself,
the revelation of all the mysteries and the sanctification of all the
dogmas. To her mother she is, to put it as moderately as possible,
nothing whatever of the kind. Not that Octavius's admiration is in any
way ridiculous or discreditable. Ann is a well formed creature, as far
as that goes; and she is perfectly ladylike, graceful, and comely, with
ensnaring eyes and hair. Besides, instead of making herself an eyesore,
like her mother, she has devised a mourning costume of black and
violet silk which does honor to her late father and reveals the family
tradition of brave unconventionality by which Ramsden sets such store.

But all this is beside the point as an explanation of Ann's charm.
Turn up her nose, give a cast to her eye, replace her black and violet
confection by the apron and feathers of a flower girl, strike all the
aitches out of her speech, and Ann would still make men dream. Vitality
is as common as humanity; but, like humanity, it sometimes rises to
genius; and Ann is one of the vital geniuses. Not at all, if you please,
an oversexed person: that is a vital defect, not a true excess. She is
a perfectly respectable, perfectly self-controlled woman, and looks
it; though her pose is fashionably frank and impulsive. She inspires
confidence as a person who will do nothing she does not mean to do; also
some fear, perhaps, as a woman who will probably do everything she means
to do without taking more account of other people than may be necessary
and what she calls right. In short, what the weaker of her own sex
sometimes call a cat.

Nothing can be more decorous than her entry and her reception by
Ramsden, whom she kisses. The late Mr Whitefield would be gratified
almost to impatience by the long faces of the men (except Tanner, who is
fidgety), the silent handgrasps, the sympathetic placing of chairs, the
sniffing of the widow, and the liquid eye of the daughter, whose heart,
apparently, will not let her control her tongue to speech. Ramsden and
Octavius take the two chairs from the wall, and place them for the two
ladies; but Ann comes to Tanner and takes his chair, which he offers
with a brusque gesture, subsequently relieving his irritation by sitting
down on the corner of the writing table with studied indecorum. Octavius
gives Mrs Whitefield a chair next Ann, and himself takes the vacant
one which Ramsden has placed under the nose of the effigy of Mr Herbert
Spencer.

Mrs Whitefield, by the way, is a little woman, whose faded flaxen hair
looks like straw on an egg. She has an expression of muddled shrewdness,
a squeak of protest in her voice, and an odd air of continually elbowing
away some larger person who is crushing her into a corner. One guesses
her as one of those women who are conscious of being treated as silly
and negligible, and who, without having strength enough to assert
themselves effectually, at any rate never submit to their fate. There
is a touch of chivalry in Octavius's scrupulous attention to her, even
whilst his whole soul is absorbed by Ann.

Ramsden goes solemnly back to his magisterial seat at the writing table,
ignoring Tanner, and opens the proceedings.

RAMSDEN. I am sorry, Annie, to force business on you at a sad time like
the present. But your poor dear father's will has raised a very serious
question. You have read it, I believe?

[Ann assents with a nod and a catch of her breath, too much affected to
speak].

I must say I am surprised to find Mr Tanner named as joint guardian
and trustee with myself of you and Rhoda. [A pause. They all look
portentous; but they have nothing to say. Ramsden, a little ruffled by
the lack of any response, continues] I don't know that I can consent to
act under such conditions. Mr Tanner has, I understand, some objection
also; but I do not profess to understand its nature: he will no doubt
speak for himself. But we are agreed that we can decide nothing until we
know your views. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to choose between
my sole guardianship and that of Mr Tanner; for I fear it is impossible
for us to undertake a joint arrangement.

ANN. [in a low musical voice] Mamma--

MRS WHITEFIELD. [hastily] Now, Ann, I do beg you not to put it on me. I
have no opinion on the subject; and if I had, it would probably not be
attended to. I am quite with whatever you three think best.

Tanner turns his head and looks fixedly at Ramsden, who angrily refuses
to receive this mute communication.

ANN. [resuming in the same gentle voice, ignoring her mother's bad
taste] Mamma knows that she is not strong enough to bear the whole
responsibility for me and Rhoda without some help and advice. Rhoda
must have a guardian; and though I am older, I do not think any young
unmarried woman should be left quite to her own guidance. I hope you
agree with me, Granny?

TANNER. [starting] Granny! Do you intend to call your guardians Granny?

ANN. Don't be foolish, Jack. Mr Ramsden has always been Grandpapa
Roebuck to me: I am Granny's Annie; and he is Annie's Granny. I
christened him so when I first learned to speak.

RAMSDEN. [sarcastically] I hope you are satisfied, Mr Tanner. Go on,
Annie: I quite agree with you.

ANN. Well, if I am to have a guardian, CAN I set aside anybody whom my
dear father appointed for me?

RAMSDEN. [biting his lip] You approve of your father's choice, then?

ANN. It is not for me to approve or disapprove. I accept it. My father
loved me and knew best what was good for me.

RAMSDEN. Of course I understand your feeling, Annie. It is what I should
have expected of you; and it does you credit. But it does not settle the
question so completely as you think. Let me put a case to you. Suppose
you were to discover that I had been guilty of some disgraceful
action--that I was not the man your poor dear father took me for. Would
you still consider it right that I should be Rhoda's guardian?

ANN. I can't imagine you doing anything disgraceful, Granny.

TANNER. [to Ramsden] You haven't done anything of the sort, have you?

RAMSDEN. [indignantly] No sir.

MRS. WHITEFIELD. [placidly] Well, then, why suppose it?

ANN. You see, Granny, Mamma would not like me to suppose it.

RAMSDEN. [much perplexed] You are both so full of natural and
affectionate feeling in these family matters that it is very hard to put
the situation fairly before you.

TANNER. Besides, my friend, you are not putting the situation fairly
before them.

RAMSDEN. [sulkily] Put it yourself, then.

TANNER. I will. Ann: Ramsden thinks I am not fit be your guardian; and I
quite agree with him. He considers that if your father had read my book,
he wouldn't have appointed me. That book is the disgraceful action he
has been talking about. He thinks it's your duty for Rhoda's sake to ask
him to act alone and to make me withdraw. Say the word and I will.

ANN. But I haven't read your book, Jack.

TANNER. [diving at the waste-paper basket and fishing the book out for
her] Then read it at once and decide.

RAMSDEN. If I am to be your guardian, I positively forbid you to read
that book, Annie. [He smites the table with his fist and rises].

ANN. Of course, if you don't wish it. [She puts the book on the table].

TANNER. If one guardian is to forbid you to read the other guardian's
book, how are we to settle it? Suppose I order you to read it! What
about your duty to me?

ANN. [gently] I am sure you would never purposely force me into a
painful dilemma, Jack.

RAMSDEN. [irritably] Yes, yes, Annie: this is all very well, and, as I
said, quite natural and becoming. But you must make a choice one way or
the other. We are as much in a dilemma as you.

ANN. I feel that I am too young, too inexperienced, to decide. My
father's wishes are sacred to me.

MRS WHITEFIELD. If you two men won't carry them out I must say it is
rather hard that you should put the responsibility on Ann. It seems to
me that people are always putting things on other people in this world.

RAMSDEN. I am sorry you take it that way.

ANN. [touchingly] Do you refuse to accept me as your ward, Granny?

RAMSDEN. No: I never said that. I greatly object to act with Mr Tanner:
that's all.

MRS. WHITEFIELD. Why? What's the matter with poor Jack?

TANNER. My views are too advanced for him.

RAMSDEN. [indignantly] They are not. I deny it.

ANN. Of course not. What nonsense! Nobody is more advanced than Granny.
I am sure it is Jack himself who has made all the difficulty. Come,
Jack! Be kind to me in my sorrow. You don't refuse to accept me as your
ward, do you?

TANNER. [gloomily] No. I let myself in for it; so I suppose I must face
it. [He turns away to the bookcase, and stands there, moodily studying
the titles of the volumes].

ANN. [rising and expanding with subdued but gushing delight] Then we are
all agreed; and my dear father's will is to be carried out. You don't
know what a joy that is to me and to my mother! [She goes to Ramsden and
presses both his hands, saying] And I shall have my dear Granny to help
and advise me. [She casts a glance at Tanner over her shoulder]. And
Jack the Giant Killer. [She goes past her mother to Octavius]. And
Jack's inseparable friend Ricky-ticky-tavy [he blushes and looks
inexpressibly foolish].

MRS WHITEFIELD. [rising and shaking her widow's weeds straight] Now that
you are Ann's guardian, Mr Ramsden, I wish you would speak to her about
her habit of giving people nicknames. They can't be expected to like it.
[She moves towards the door].

ANN. How can you say such a thing, Mamma! [Glowing with affectionate
remorse] Oh, I wonder can you be right! Have I been inconsiderate? [She
turns to Octavius, who is sitting astride his chair with his elbows on
the back of it. Putting her hand on his forehead the turns his face up
suddenly]. Do you want to be treated like a grown up man? Must I call
you Mr Robinson in future?

OCTAVIUS. [earnestly] Oh please call me Ricky-ticky--tavy, "Mr Robinson"
would hurt me cruelly. [She laughs and pats his cheek with her finger;
then comes back to Ramsden]. You know I'm beginning to think that Granny
is rather a piece of impertinence. But I never dreamt of its hurting
you.

RAMSDEN. [breezily, as he pats her affectionately on the back] My dear
Annie, nonsense. I insist on Granny. I won't answer to any other name
than Annie's Granny.

ANN. [gratefully] You all spoil me, except Jack.

TANNER. [over his shoulder, from the bookcase] I think you ought to call
me Mr Tanner.

ANN. [gently] No you don't, Jack. That's like the things you say on
purpose to shock people: those who know you pay no attention to them.
But, if you like, I'll call you after your famous ancestor Don Juan.

RAMSDEN. Don Juan!

ANN. [innocently] Oh, is there any harm in it? I didn't know. Then I
certainly won't call you that. May I call you Jack until I can think of
something else?

TANKER. Oh, for Heaven's sake don't try to invent anything worse. I
capitulate. I consent to Jack. I embrace Jack. Here endeth my first and
last attempt to assert my authority.

ANN. You see, Mamma, they all really like to have pet names.

MRS WHITEFIELD. Well, I think you might at least drop them until we are
out of mourning.

ANN. [reproachfully, stricken to the soul] Oh, how could you remind me,
mother? [She hastily leaves the room to conceal her emotion].

MRS WHITEFIELD. Of course. My fault as usual! [She follows Ann].

TANNER. [coming from the bockcase] Ramsden: we're
beaten--smashed--nonentitized, like her mother.

RAMSDEN. Stuff, Sir. [He follows Mrs Whitefield out of the room].

TANNER. [left alone with Octavius, stares whimsically at him] Tavy: do
you want to count for something in the world?

OCTAVIUS. I want to count for something as a poet: I want to write a
great play.

TANNER. With Ann as the heroine?

OCTAVIUS. Yes: I confess it.

TANNER. Take care, Tavy. The play with Ann as the heroine is all right;
but if you're not very careful, by Heaven she'll marry you.

OCTAVIUS. [sighing] No such luck, Jack!

TANNER. Why, man, your head is in the lioness's mouth: you are half
swallowed already--in three bites--Bite One, Ricky; Bite Two, Ticky;
Bite Three, Tavy; and down you go.

OCTAVIUS. She is the same to everybody, Jack: you know her ways.

TANNER. Yes: she breaks everybody's back with the stroke of her paw; but
the question is, which of us will she eat? My own opinion is that she
means to eat you.

OCTAVIUS. [rising, pettishly] It's horrible to talk like that about her
when she is upstairs crying for her father. But I do so want her to eat
me that I can bear your brutalities because they give me hope.

TANNER. Tavy; that's the devilish side of a woman's fascination: she
makes you will your own destruction.

OCTAVIUS. But it's not destruction: it's fulfilment.

TANNER. Yes, of HER purpose; and that purpose is neither her happiness
nor yours, but Nature's. Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of
creation. She sacrifices herself to it: do you think she will hesitate
to sacrifice you?

OCTAVIUS. Why, it is just because she is self-sacrificing that she will
not sacrifice those she loves.

TANNER. That is the profoundest of mistakes, Tavy. It is the
self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most recklessly. Because
they are unselfish, they are kind in little things. Because they have a
purpose which is not their own purpose, but that of the whole universe,
a man is nothing to them but an instrument of that purpose.

OCTAVIUS. Don't be ungenerous, Jack. They take the tenderest care of us.

TANNER. Yes, as a soldier takes care of his rifle or a musician of his
violin. But do they allow us any purpose or freedom of our own? Will
they lend us to one another? Can the strongest man escape from them when
once he is appropriated? They tremble when we are in danger, and weep
when we die; but the tears are not for us, but for a father wasted, a
son's breeding thrown away. They accuse us of treating them as a mere
means to our pleasure; but how can so feeble and transient a folly as
a man's selfish pleasure enslave a woman as the whole purpose of Nature
embodied in a woman can enslave a man?

OCTAVIUS. What matter, if the slavery makes us happy?

TANNER. No matter at all if you have no purpose of your own, and are,
like most men, a mere breadwinner. But you, Tavy, are an artist: that
is, you have a purpose as absorbing and as unscrupulous as a woman's
purpose.

OCTAVIUS. Not unscrupulous.

TANNER. Quite unscrupulous. The true artist will let his wife starve,
his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at
seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half
vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to
study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their
inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest
creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see
visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades
women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means
them to do it for his. He steals the mother's milk and blackens it to
make printer's ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He
pretends to spare her the pangs of childbearing so that he may have
for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her
children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a
bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a bloodsucker, a
hypocrite and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if
only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint
a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder
philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist's work is to show us
ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of
ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as
surely as any woman creates new men. In the rage of that creation he
is as ruthless as the woman, as dangerous to her as she to him, and
as horribly fascinating. Of all human struggles there is none so
treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man
and the mother woman. Which shall use up the other? that is the issue
between them. And it is all the deadlier because, in your romanticist
cant, they love one another.

OCTAVIUS. Even if it were so--and I don't admit it for a moment--it is
out of the deadliest struggles that we get the noblest characters.

TANNER. Remember that the next time you meet a grizzly bear or a Bengal
tiger, Tavy.

OCTAVIUS. I meant where there is love, Jack.

TANNER. Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no love sincerer than the
love of food. I think Ann loves you that way: she patted your cheek as
if it were a nicely underdone chop.

OCTAVIUS. You know, Jack, I should have to run away from you if I did
not make it a fixed rule not to mind anything you say. You come out with
perfectly revolting things sometimes.

Ramsden returns, followed by Ann. They come in quickly, with their
former leisurely air of decorous grief changed to one of genuine
concern, and, on Ramsden's part, of worry. He comes between the two men,
intending to address Octavius, but pulls himself up abruptly as he sees
Tanner.

RAMSDEN. I hardly expected to find you still here, Mr Tanner.

TANNER. Am I in the way? Good morning, fellow guardian [he goes towards
the door].

ANN. Stop, Jack. Granny: he must know, sooner or later.

RAMSDEN. Octavius: I have a very serious piece of news for you. It is of
the most private and delicate nature--of the most painful nature too, I
am sorry to say. Do you wish Mr Tanner to be present whilst I explain?

OCTAVIUS. [turning pale] I have no secrets from Jack.

RAMSDEN. Before you decide that finally, let me say that the news
concerns your sister, and that it is terrible news.

OCTAVIUS. Violet! What has happened? Is she--dead?

RAMSDEN. I am not sure that it is not even worse than that.

OCTAVIUS. Is she badly hurt? Has there been an accident?

RAMSDEN. No: nothing of that sort.

TANNER. Ann: will you have the common humanity to tell us what the
matter is?

ANN. [half whispering] I can't. Violet has done something dreadful. We
shall have to get her away somewhere. [She flutters to the writing
table and sits in Ramsden's chair, leaving the three men to fight it out
between them].

OCTAVIUS. [enlightened] Is that what you meant, Mr Ramsden?

RAMSDEN. Yes. [Octavius sinks upon a chair, crushed]. I am afraid there
is no doubt that Violet did not really go to Eastbourne three weeks ago
when we thought she was with the Parry Whitefields. And she called on a
strange doctor yesterday with a wedding ring on her finger. Mrs. Parry
Whitefield met her there by chance; and so the whole thing came out.

OCTAVIUS. [rising with his fists clenched] Who is the scoundrel?

ANN. She won't tell us.

OCTAVIUS. [collapsing upon his chair again] What a frightful thing!

TANNER. [with angry sarcasm] Dreadful. Appalling. Worse than death, as
Ramsden says. [He comes to Octavius]. What would you not give, Tavy, to
turn it into a railway accident, with all her bones broken or something
equally respectable and deserving of sympathy?

OCTAVIUS. Don't be brutal, Jack.

TANNER. Brutal! Good Heavens, man, what are you crying for? Here is
a woman whom we all supposed to be making bad water color sketches,
practising Grieg and Brahms, gadding about to concerts and parties,
wasting her life and her money. We suddenly learn that she has turned
from these sillinesses to the fulfilment of her highest purpose and
greatest function--to increase, multiply and replenish the earth. And
instead of admiring her courage and rejoicing in her instinct; instead
of crowning the completed womanhood and raising the triumphal strain of
"Unto us a child is born: unto us a son is given," here you are--you who
have been as merry as Brigs in your mourning for the dead--all pulling
long faces and looking as ashamed and disgraced as if the girl had
committed the vilest of crimes.

RAMSDEN. [roaring with rage] I will not have these abominations uttered
in my house [he smites the writing table with his fist].

TANNER. Look here: if you insult me again I'll take you at your word and
leave your house. Ann: where is Violet now?

ANN. Why? Are you going to her?

TANNER. Of course I am going to her. She wants help; she wants money;
she wants respect and congratulation. She wants every chance for her
child. She does not seem likely to get it from you: she shall from me.
Where is she?

ANN. Don't be so headstrong, Jack. She's upstairs.

TANNER. What!