No More Learning

Oh, you shan't need to. She'll accept you, my boy--although
[here he suddenly becomes very serious indeed] you have one great
drawback.

OCTAVIUS. [anxiously] What drawback is that, Mr Ramsden? I should rather
say which of my many drawbacks?

RAMSDEN. I'll tell you, Octavius. [He takes from the table a book bound
in red cloth]. I have in my hand a copy of the most infamous, the most
scandalous, the most mischievous, the most blackguardly book that ever
escaped burning at the hands of the common hangman. I have not read
it: I would not soil my mind with such filth; but I have read what the
papers say of it. The title is quite enough for me. [He reads it]. The
Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion by John Tanner, M. I. R. C. ,
Member of the Idle Rich Class.

OCTAVIUS. [smiling] But Jack--

RAMSDEN. [testily] For goodness' sake, don't call him Jack under my
roof [he throws the book violently down on the table, Then, somewhat
relieved, he comes past the table to Octavius, and addresses him at
close quarters with impressive gravity]. Now, Octavius, I know that my
dead friend was right when he said you were a generous lad. I know that
this man was your schoolfellow, and that you feel bound to stand by
him because there was a boyish friendship between you. But I ask you
to consider the altered circumstances. You were treated as a son in my
friend's house. You lived there; and your friends could not be turned
from the door. This Tanner was in and out there on your account almost
from his childhood. He addresses Annie by her Christian name as freely
as you do. Well, while her father was alive, that was her father's
business, not mine. This man Tanner was only a boy to him: his opinions
were something to be laughed at, like a man's hat on a child's head.
But now Tanner is a grown man and Annie a grown woman. And her father
is gone. We don't as yet know the exact terms of his will; but he often
talked it over with me; and I have no more doubt than I have that you're
sitting there that the will appoints me Annie's trustee and guardian.
[Forcibly] Now I tell you, once for all, I can't and I won't have Annie
placed in such a position that she must, out of regard for you, suffer
the intimacy of this fellow Tanner. It's not fair: it's not right: it's
not kind. What are you going to do about it?

OCTAVIUS. But Ann herself has told Jack that whatever his opinions are,
he will always be welcome because he knew her dear father.

RAMSDEN. [out of patience] That girl's mad about her duty to her
parents. [He starts off like a goaded ox in the direction of John
Bright, in whose expression there is no sympathy for him. As he speaks,
he fumes down to Herbert Spencer, who receives him still more coldly]
Excuse me, Octavius; but there are limits to social toleration. You
know that I am not a bigoted or prejudiced man. You know that I am plain
Roebuck Ramsden when other men who have done less have got handles to
their names, because I have stood for equality and liberty of conscience
while they were truckling to the Church and to the aristocracy.
Whitefield and I lost chance after chance through our advanced opinions.
But I draw the line at Anarchism and Free Love and that sort of thing.
If I am to be Annie's guardian, she will have to learn that she has a
duty to me. I won't have it: I will not have it. She must forbid John
Tanner the house; and so must you.

The parlormaid returns.

OCTAVIUS. But--

RAMSDEN. [calling his attention to the servant] Ssh! Well?

THE MAID. Mr Tanner wishes to see you, sir.

RAMSDEN. Mr Tanner!

OCTAVIUS. Jack!

RAMSDEN. How dare Mr Tanner call on me! Say I cannot see him.

OCTAVIUS. [hurt] I am sorry you are turning my friend from your door
like that.

THE MAID. [calmly] He's not at the door, sir. He's upstairs in the
drawingroom with Miss Ramsden. He came with Mrs Whitefield and Miss Ann
and Miss Robinson, sir.

Ramsden's feelings are beyond words.

OCTAVIUS. [grinning] That's very like Jack, Mr Ramsden. You must see
him, even if it's only to turn him out.

RAMSDEN. [hammering out his words with suppressed fury] Go upstairs and
ask Mr Tanner to be good enough to step down here. [The parlormaid goes
out; and Ramsden returns to the fireplace, as to a fortified position].
I must say that of all the confounded pieces of impertinence--well, if
these are Anarchist manners I hope you like them. And Annie with him!
Annie! A-- [he chokes].

OCTAVIUS. Yes: that's what surprises me. He's so desperately afraid of
Ann. There must be something the matter.

Mr John Tanner suddenly opens the door and enters. He is too young to be
described simply as a big man with a beard. But it is already plain that
middle life will find him in that category. He has still some of the
slimness of youth; but youthfulness is not the effect he aims at: his
frock coat would befit a prime minister; and a certain high chested
carriage of the shoulders, a lofty pose of the head, and the Olympian
majesty with which a mane, or rather a huge wisp, of hazel colored
hair is thrown back from an imposing brow, suggest Jupiter rather than
Apollo. He is prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark
the snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the thirty-secondth
of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad. He is carefully
dressed, not from the vanity that cannot resist finery, but from a sense
of the importance of everything he does which leads him to make as
much of paying a call as other men do of getting married or laying a
foundation stone. A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a
megalomaniac, who would be lost without a sense of humor.

Just at present the sense of humor is in abeyance. To say that he is
excited is nothing: all his moods are phases of excitement. He is now in
the panic-stricken phase; and he walks straight up to Ramsden as if with
the fixed intention of shooting him on his own hearthrug. But what he
pulls from his breast pocket is not a pistol, but a foolscap document
which he thrusts under the indignant nose of Ramsden as he exclaims--

TANNER. Ramsden: do you know what that is?

RAMSDEN. [loftily] No, Sir.

TANNER. It's a copy of Whitefield's will. Ann got it this morning.

RAMSDEN. When you say Ann, you mean, I presume, Miss Whitefield.

TANNER. I mean our Ann, your Ann, Tavy's Ann, and now, Heaven help me,
my Ann!

OCTAVIUS. [rising, very pale] What do you mean?

TANNER. Mean! [He holds up the will]. Do you know who is appointed Ann's
guardian by this will?

RAMSDEN. [coolly] I believe I am.

TANNER. You! You and I, man. I! I! ! I! ! ! Both of us! [He flings the will
down on the writing table].

RAMSDEN. You! Impossible.

TANNER. It's only too hideously true. [He throws himself into Octavius's
chair]. Ramsden: get me out of it somehow. You don't know Ann as well
as I do. She'll commit every crime a respectable woman can; and
she'll justify every one of them by saying that it was the wish of
her guardians. She'll put everything on us; and we shall have no more
control over her than a couple of mice over a cat.

OCTAVIUS. Jack: I wish you wouldn't talk like that about Ann.

TANNER. This chap's in love with her: that's another complication. Well,
she'll either jilt him and say I didn't approve of him, or marry him
and say you ordered her to. I tell you, this is the most staggering blow
that has ever fallen on a man of my age and temperament.

RAMSDEN. Let me see that will, sir. [He goes to the writing table and
picks it up]. I cannot believe that my old friend Whitefield would have
shown such a want of confidence in me as to associate me with-- [His
countenance falls as he reads].

TANNER. It's all my own doing: that's the horrible irony of it. He told
me one day that you were to be Ann's guardian; and like a fool I began
arguing with him about the folly of leaving a young woman under the
control of an old man with obsolete ideas.

RAMSDEN. [stupended] My ideas obsolete! ! ! ! !

TANNER. Totally. I had just finished an essay called Down with
Government by the Greyhaired; and I was full of arguments and
illustrations. I said the proper thing was to combine the experience of
an old hand with the vitality of a young one. Hang me if he didn't take
me at my word and alter his will--it's dated only a fortnight after that
conversation--appointing me as joint guardian with you!

RAMSDEN. [pale and determined] I shall refuse to act.

TANNER. What's the good of that? I've been refusing all the way from
Richmond; but Ann keeps on saying that of course she's only an orphan;
and that she can't expect the people who were glad to come to the house
in her father's time to trouble much about her now. That's the latest
game. An orphan! It's like hearing an ironclad talk about being at the
mercy of the winds and waves.

OCTAVIUS. This is not fair, Jack. She is an orphan. And you ought to
stand by her.

TANNER. Stand by her! What danger is she in? She has the law on her
side; she has popular sentiment on her side; she has plenty of money
and no conscience. All she wants with me is to load up all her moral
responsibilities on me, and do as she likes at the expense of my
character. I can't control her; and she can compromise me as much as she
likes. I might as well be her husband.

RAMSDEN. You can refuse to accept the guardianship. I shall certainly
refuse to hold it jointly with you.

TANNER. Yes; and what will she say to that? what does she say to it?
Just that her father's wishes are sacred to her, and that she shall
always look up to me as her guardian whether I care to face the
responsibility or not. Refuse! You might as well refuse to accept the
embraces of a boa constrictor when once it gets round your neck.

OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is not kind to me, Jack.

TANNER. [rising and going to Octavius to console him, but still
lamenting] If he wanted a young guardian, why didn't he appoint Tavy?

RAMSDEN. Ah! why indeed?

OCTAVIUS. I will tell you. He sounded me about it; but I refused the
trust because I loved her. I had no right to let myself be forced on her
as a guardian by her father. He spoke to her about it; and she said I
was right. You know I love her, Mr Ramsden; and Jack knows it too. If
Jack loved a woman, I would not compare her to a boa constrictor in his
presence, however much I might dislike her [he sits down between the
busts and turns his face to the wall].

RAMSDEN.
I do not believe that Whitefield was in his right senses
when he made that will. You have admitted that he made it under your
influence.

TANNER. You ought to be pretty well obliged to me for my influence. He
leaves you two thousand five hundred for your trouble. He leaves Tavy a
dowry for his sister and five thousand for himself.

OCTAVIUS. [his tears flowing afresh] Oh, I can't take it. He was too
good to us.

TANNER. You won't get it, my boy, if Ramsden upsets the will.

RAMSDEN. Ha! I see. You have got me in a cleft stick.

TANNER. He leaves me nothing but the charge of Ann's morals, on the
ground that I have already more money than is good for me. That shows
that he had his wits about him, doesn't it?

RAMSDEN. [grimly] I admit that.

OCTAVIUS. [rising and coming from his refuge by the wall] Mr Ramsden:
I think you are prejudiced against Jack. He is a man of honor, and
incapable of abusing--

TANNER. Don't, Tavy: you'll make me ill. I am not a man of honor: I am
a man struck down by a dead hand. Tavy: you must marry her after all and
take her off my hands. And I had set my heart on saving you from her!

OCTAVIUS. Oh, Jack, you talk of saving me from my highest happiness.

TANNER. Yes, a lifetime of happiness. If it were only the first half
hour's happiness, Tavy, I would buy it for you with my last penny. But
a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on
earth.

RAMSDEN. [violently] Stuff, sir. Talk sense; or else go and waste
someone else's time: I have something better to do than listen to your
fooleries [he positively kicks his way to his table and resumes his
seat].

TANNER. You hear him, Tavy! Not an idea in his head later than
eighteen-sixty. We can't leave Ann with no other guardian to turn to.

RAMSDEN. I am proud of your contempt for my character and opinions, sir.
Your own are set forth in that book, I believe.

TANNER. [eagerly going to the table] What! You've got my book! What do
you think of it?

RAMSDEN. Do you suppose I would read such a book, sir?

TANNER. Then why did you buy it?

RAMSDEN. I did not buy it, sir. It has been sent me by some foolish
lady who seems to admire your views. I was about to dispose of it when
Octavius interrupted me. I shall do so now, with your permission. [He
throws the book into the waste paper basket with such vehemence that
Tanner recoils under the impression that it is being thrown at his
head].

TANNER. You have no more manners than I have myself. However, that saves
ceremony between us. [He sits down again]. What do you intend to do
about this will?

OCTAVIUS. May I make a suggestion?

RAMSDEN. Certainly, Octavius.

OCTAVIUS. Aren't we forgetting that Ann herself may have some wishes in
this matter?

RAMSDEN. I quite intend that Annie's wishes shall be consulted in every
reasonable way. But she is only a woman, and a young and inexperienced
woman at that.

TANNER. Ramsden: I begin to pity you.

RAMSDEN. [hotly] I don't want to know how you feel towards me, Mr
Tanner.

TANNER. Ann will do just exactly what she likes. And what's more, she'll
force us to advise her to do it; and she'll put the blame on us if it
turns out badly. So, as Tavy is longing to see her--

OCTAVIUS. [shyly] I am not, Jack.

TANNER. You lie, Tavy: you are. So let's have her down from the
drawing-room and ask her what she intends us to do. Off with you, Tavy,
and fetch her. [Tavy turns to go]. And don't be long for the strained
relations between myself and Ramsden will make the interval rather
painful [Ramsden compresses his lips, but says nothing--].

OCTAVIUS. Never mind him, Mr Ramsden. He's not serious. [He goes out].

RAMSDEN [very deliberately] Mr Tanner: you are the most impudent person
I have ever met.

TANNER. [seriously] I know it, Ramsden. Yet even I cannot wholly conquer
shame. We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything
that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our
incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as
we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are
ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom
instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of
two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more
things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. Why, you're
ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing you're not
ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it; and even that
only means that you're ashamed to have heterodox opinions. Look at the
effect I produce because my fairy godmother withheld from me this gift
of shame. I have every possible virtue that a man can have except--

RAMSDEN. I am glad you think so well of yourself.

TANNER. All you mean by that is that you think I ought to be ashamed of
talking about my virtues. You don't mean that I haven't got them: you
know perfectly well that I am as sober and honest a citizen as yourself,
as truthful personally, and much more truthful politically and morally.

RAMSDEN. [touched on his most sensitive point] I deny that. I will
not allow you or any man to treat me as if I were a mere member of
the British public. I detest its prejudices; I scorn its narrowness; I
demand the right to think for myself. You pose as an advanced man. Let
me tell you that I was an advanced man before you were born.

TANNER. I knew it was a long time ago.

RAMSDEN. I am as advanced as ever I was. I defy you to prove that I have
ever hauled down the flag. I am more advanced than ever I was. I grow
more advanced every day.

TANNER. More advanced in years, Polonius.

RAMSDEN. Polonius! 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.