No More Learning

But, you know,
I'm very fond of Tavy: he's a sort of son to me; and I don't want him to
be trampled on and made wretched.

TANNER. Whereas I don't matter, I suppose.

MRS WHITEFIELD. Oh, you are different, somehow: you are able to take
care of yourself. You'd serve her out. And anyhow, she must marry
somebody.

TANNER. Aha! there speaks the life instinct. You detest her; but you
feel that you must get her married.

MRS WHITEFIELD. [rising, shocked] Do you mean that I detest my own
daughter! Surely you don't believe me to be so wicked and unnatural as
that, merely because I see her faults.

TANNER. [cynically] You love her, then?

MRS WHITEFIELD. Why, of course I do. What queer things you say, Jack! We
can't help loving our own blood relations.

TANNER. Well, perhaps it saves unpleasantness to say so. But for my
part, I suspect that the tables of consanguinity have a natural basis in
a natural repugnance [he rises].

MRS WHITEFIELD. You shouldn't say things like that, Jack. I hope you
won't tell Ann that I have been speaking to you. I only wanted to
set myself right with you and Tavy. I couldn't sit mumchance and have
everything put on me.

TANNER. [politely] Quite so.

MRS WHITEFIELD. [dissatisfied] And now I've only made matters worse.
Tavy's angry with me because I don't worship Ann. And when it's been put
into my head that Ann ought to marry you, what can I say except that it
would serve her right?

TANNER. Thank you.

MRS WHITEFIELD. Now don't be silly and twist what I say into something I
don't mean. I ought to have fair play--

Ann comes from the villa, followed presently by Violet, who is dressed
for driving.

ANN. [coming to her mother's right hand with threatening suavity] Well,
mamma darling, you seem to be having a delightful chat with Jack. We can
hear you all over the place.

MRS WHITEFIELD. [appalled] Have you overheard--

TANNER. Never fear: Ann is only--well, we were discussing that habit of
hers just now. She hasn't heard a word.

MRS WHITEFIELD. [stoutly] I don't care whether she has or not: I have a
right to say what I please.

VIOLET. [arriving on the lawn and coming between Mrs Whitefield and
Tanner] I've come to say goodbye. I'm off for my honeymoon.

MRS WHITEFIELD. [crying] Oh don't say that, Violet. And no wedding, no
breakfast, no clothes, nor anything.

VIOLET. [petting her] It won't be for long.

MRS WHITEFIELD. Don't let him take you to America. Promise me that you
won't.

VIOLET. [very decidedly] I should think not, indeed. Don't cry, dear:
I'm only going to the hotel.

MRS WHITEFIELD. But going in that dress, with your luggage, makes one
realize--[she chokes, and then breaks out again] How I wish you were my
daughter, Violet!

VIOLET. [soothing her] There, there: so I am. Ann will be jealous.

MRS WHITEFIELD. Ann doesn't care a bit for me.

ANN. Fie, mother! Come, now: you mustn't cry any more: you know Violet
doesn't like it [Mrs Whitefzeld dries her eyes, and subsides].

VIOLET. Goodbye, Jack.

TANNER. Goodbye, Violet.

VIOLET. The sooner you get married too, the better. You will be much
less misunderstood.

TANNER. [restively] I quite expect to get married in the course of the
afternoon. You all seem to have set your minds on it.

VIOLET. You might do worse. [To Mrs Whitefield: putting her arm round
her] Let me take you to the hotel with me: the drive will do you good.
Come in and get a wrap. [She takes her towards the villa].

MRS WHITEFIELD. [as they go up through the garden] I don't know what I
shall do when you are gone, with no one but Ann in the house; and she
always occupied with the men! It's not to be expected that your husband
will care to be bothered with an old woman like me. Oh, you needn't
tell me: politeness is all very well; but I know what people think--[She
talks herself and Violet out of sight and hearing].

Ann, musing on Violet's opportune advice, approaches Tanner; examines
him humorously for a moment from toe to top; and finally delivers her
opinion.

ANN. Violet is quite right. You ought to get married.

TANNER. [explosively] Ann: I will not marry you. Do you hear? I won't,
won't, won't, won't, WON'T marry you.

ANN. [placidly] Well, nobody axd you, sir she said, sir she said, sir
she said. So that's settled.

TANNER. Yes, nobody has asked me; but everybody treats the thing as
settled. It's in the air. When we meet, the others go away on absurd
pretexts to leave us alone together. Ramsden no longer scowls at me: his
eye beams, as if he were already giving you away to me in church. Tavy
refers me to your mother and gives me his blessing. Straker openly
treats you as his future employer: it was he who first told me of it.

ANN. Was that why you ran away?

TANNER. Yes, only to be stopped by a lovesick brigand and run down like
a truant schoolboy.

ANN. Well, if you don't want to be married, you needn't be [she turns
away from him and sits down, much at her ease].

TANNER. [following her] Does any man want to be hanged? Yet men let
themselves be hanged without a struggle for life, though they could at
least give the chaplain a black eye. We do the world's will, not our
own. I have a frightful feeling that I shall let myself be married
because it is the world's will that you should have a husband.

ANN. I daresay I shall, someday.

TANNER. But why me--me of all men? Marriage is to me apostasy,
profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood,
sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation,
acceptance of defeat. I shall decay like a thing that has served its
purpose and is done with; I shall change from a man with a future to
a man with a past; I shall see in the greasy eyes of all the other
husbands their relief at the arrival of a new prisoner to share their
ignominy. The young men will scorn me as one who has sold out: to the
young women I, who have always been an enigma and a possibility,
shall be merely somebody else's property--and damaged goods at that: a
secondhand man at best.

ANN. Well, your wife can put on a cap and make herself ugly to keep you
in countenance, like my grandmother.

TANNER. So that she may make her triumph more insolent by publicly
throwing away the bait the moment the trap snaps on the victim!

ANN. After all, though, what difference would it make? Beauty is all
very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been
in the house three days? I thought our pictures very lovely when papa
bought them; but I haven't looked at them for years. You never bother
about my looks: you are too well used to me. I might be the umbrella
stand.

TANNER. You lie, you vampire: you lie.

ANN. Flatterer. Why are you trying to fascinate me, Jack, if you don't
want to marry me?

TANNER. The Life Force. I am in the grip of the Life Force.

ANN. I don't understand in the least: it sounds like the Life Guards.

TANNER. Why don't you marry Tavy? He is willing. Can you not be
satisfied unless your prey struggles?

ANN. [turning to him as if to let him into a secret] Tavy will never
marry. Haven't you noticed that that sort of man never marries?

TANNER. What! a man who idolizes women who sees nothing in nature but
romantic scenery for love duets! Tavy, the chivalrous, the faithful, the
tenderhearted and true! Tavy never marry! Why, he was born to be swept
up by the first pair of blue eyes he meets in the street.

ANN. Yes, I know. All the same, Jack, men like that always live in
comfortable bachelor lodgings with broken hearts, and are adored
by their landladies, and never get married. Men like you always get
married.

TANNER. [Smiting his brow] How frightfully, horribly true! It has been
staring me in the face all my life; and I never saw it before.

ANN. Oh, it's the same with women. The poetic temperament's a very nice
temperament, very amiable, very harmless and poetic, I daresay; but it's
an old maid's temperament.

TANNER. Barren. The Life Force passes it by.

ANN. If that's what you mean by the Life Force, yes.

TANNER. You don't care for Tavy?

ANN. [looking round carefully to make sure that Tavy is not within
earshot] No.

TANNER. And you do care for me?

ANN. [rising quietly and shaking her finger at him] Now Jack! Behave
yourself.

TANNER. Infamous, abandoned woman! Devil!

ANN. Boa-constrictor! Elephant!

TANNER. Hypocrite!

ANN. [Softly] I must be, for my future husband's sake.

TANNER. For mine! [Correcting himself savagely] I mean for his.

ANN. [ignoring the correction] Yes, for yours. You had better marry what
you call a hypocrite, Jack.
Women who are not hypocrites go about in
rational dress and are insulted and get into all sorts of hot water. And
then their husbands get dragged in too, and live in continual dread of
fresh complications. Wouldn't you prefer a wife you could depend on?

TANNER. No, a thousand times no: hot water is the revolutionist's
element. You clean men as you clean milkpails, by scalding them.

ANN. Cold water has its uses too. It's healthy.

TANNER. [despairingly] Oh, you are witty: at the supreme moment the Life
Force endows you with every quality. Well, I too can be a hypocrite.
Your father's will appointed me your guardian, not your suitor. I shall
be faithful to my trust.

ANN. [in low siren tones] He asked me who would I have as my guardian
before he made that will. I chose you!

TANNER. The will is yours then! The trap was laid from the beginning.

ANN. [concentrating all her magic] From the beginning from our
childhood--for both of us--by the Life Force.

TANNER. I will not marry you. I will not marry you.

ANN. Oh; you will, you will.

TANNER. I tell you, no, no, no.

ANN. I tell you, yes, yes, yes.

TANNER. NO.

ANN. [coaxing--imploring--almost exhausted] Yes. Before it is too late
for repentance. Yes.

TANNER. [struck by the echo from the past] When did all this happen to
me before? Are we two dreaming?

ANN. [suddenly losing her courage, with an anguish that she does not
conceal] No. We are awake; and you have said no: that is all.

TANNER. [brutally] Well?

ANN. Well, I made a mistake: you do not love me.

TANNER. [seizing her in his arms] It is false: I love you. The Life
Force enchants me: I have the whole world in my arms when I clasp you.
But I am fighting for my freedom, for my honor, for myself, one and
indivisible.

ANN. Your happiness will be worth them all.

TANNER. You would sell freedom and honor and self for happiness?

ANN. It will not be all happiness for me. Perhaps death.

TANNER. [groaning] Oh, that clutch holds and hurts. What have you
grasped in me? Is there a father's heart as well as a mother's?

ANN. Take care, Jack: if anyone comes while we are like this, you will
have to marry me.

TANNER. If we two stood now on the edge of a precipice, I would hold you
tight and jump.

ANN. [panting, failing more and more under the strain] Jack: let me go.
I have dared so frightfully--it is lasting longer than I thought. Let me
go: I can't bear it.

TANNER. Nor I. Let it kill us.

ANN. Yes: I don't care. I am at the end of my forces. I don't care. I
think I am going to faint.

At this moment Violet and Octavius come from the villa with Mrs
Whitefield, who is wrapped up for driving. Simultaneously Malone and
Ramsden, followed by Mendoza and Straker, come in through the little
gate in the paling. Tanner shamefacedly releases Ann, who raises her
hand giddily to her forehead.

MALONE. Take care. Something's the matter with the lady.

RAMSDEN. What does this mean?

VIOLET. [running between Ann and Tanner] Are you ill?

ANN. [reeling, with a supreme effort] I have promised to marry Jack.
[She swoons. Violet kneels by her and chafes her band. Tanner runs round
to her other hand, and tries to lift her bead. Octavius goes to Violet's
assistance, but does not know what to do. Mrs Whitefield hurries back
into the villa. Octavius, Malone and Ramsden run to Ann and crowd round
her, stooping to assist. Straker coolly comes to Ann's feet, and Mendoza
to her head, both upright and self-possessed].

STRAKER. Now then, ladies and gentlemen: she don't want a crowd round
her: she wants air--all the air she can git. If you please, gents--
[Malone and Ramsden allow him to drive them gently past Ann and up
the lawn towards the garden, where Octavius, who has already become
conscious of his uselessness, joins them. Straker, following them up,
pauses for a moment to instruct Tanner]. Don't lift er ed, Mr Tanner:
let it go flat so's the blood can run back into it.

MENDOZA. He is right, Mr Tanner. Trust to the air of the Sierra. [He
withdraws delicately to the garden steps].

TANNER. [rising] I yield to your superior knowledge of physiology,
Henry. [He withdraws to the corner of the lawn; and Octavius immediately
hurries down to him].

TAVY. [aside to Tanner, grasping his hand] Jack: be very happy.

TANNER. [aside to Tavy] I never asked her. It is a trap for me. [He goes
up the lawn towards the garden. Octavius remains petrified].

MENDOZA. [intercepting Mrs Whitefield, who comes from the villa with a
glass of brandy] What is this, madam [he takes it from her]?

MRS WHITEFIELD. A little brandy.

MENDOZA. The worst thing you could give her. Allow me. [He swallows it].
Trust to the air of the Sierra, madam.

For a moment the men all forget Ann and stare at Mendoza.

ANN. [in Violet's ear, clutching her round the neck] Violet, did Jack
say anything when I fainted?

VIOLET. No.

ANN. Ah! [with a sigh of intense relief she relapses].

MRS WHITEFIELD. Oh, she's fainted again.

They are about to rush back to her; but Mendoza stops them with a
warning gesture.

ANN. [supine] No I haven't. I'm quite happy.

TANNER. [suddenly walking determinedly to her, and snatching her hand
from Violet to feel her pulse] Why, her pulse is positively bounding.
Come, getup. What nonsense! Up with you. [He gets her up summarily].

ANN. Yes: I feel strong enough now. But you very nearly killed me, Jack,
for all that.

MALONE. A rough wooer, eh? They're the best sort, Miss Whitefield.
I congratulate Mr Tanner; and I hope to meet you and him as frequent
guests at the Abbey.

ANN. Thank you. [She goes past Malone to Octavius] Ricky Ticky Tavy:
congratulate me. [Aside to him] I want to make you cry for the last
time.

TAVY. [steadfastly] No more tears. I am happy in your happiness. And I
believe in you in spite of everything.

RAMSDEN. [coming between Malone and Tanner] You are a happy man, Jack
Tanner. I envy you.

MENDOZA. [advancing between Violet and Tanner] Sir: there are two
tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is
to get it. Mine and yours, sir.

TANNER. Mr Mendoza: I have no heart's desires. Ramsden: it is very easy
for you to call me a happy man: you are only a spectator. I am one of
the principals; and I know better. Ann: stop tempting Tavy, and come
back to me.

ANN. [complying] You are absurd, Jack. [She takes his proffered arm].

TANNER. [continuing] I solemnly say that I am not a happy man. Ann looks
happy; but she is only triumphant, successful, victorious. That is not
happiness, but the price for which the strong sell their happiness. What
we have both done this afternoon is to renounce tranquillity, above all
renounce the romantic possibilities of an unknown future, for the cares
of a household and a family. I beg that no man may seize the occasion to
get half drunk and utter imbecile speeches and coarse pleasantries at my
expense. We propose to furnish our own house according to our own taste;
and I hereby give notice that the seven or eight travelling clocks,
the four or five dressing cases, the salad bowls, the carvers and
fish slices, the copy of Tennyson in extra morocco, and all the other
articles you are preparing to heap upon us, will be instantly sold, and
the proceeds devoted to circulating free copies of the Revolutionist's
Handbook. The wedding will take place three days after our return
to England, by special license, at the office of the district
superintendent registrar, in the presence of my solicitor and his clerk,
who, like his clients, will be in ordinary walking dress.

VIOLET. [with intense conviction] You are a brute, Jack.

ANN. [looking at him with fond pride and caressing his arm] Never mind
her, dear. Go on talking.

TANNER. Talking!

Universal laughter.





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