Plays of Near & Far by Lord Dunsany (top novels to read TXT) 📗

only wait. (With emphasis.) If these mice eat it——

Splurge: Yes, sir?

Sladder: The public will eat it.

Splurge: Ah!

Sladder: Any other business to-day?

Splurge: O, only the cook, sir. He's complaining about the vegetables, sir. He says he's never been anywhere before where they didn't buy them. We get them out of the kitchen garden here, and it seems he doesn't understand it. Says he won't serve a greengrocer, sir.

Sladder: A kitchen garden is the wrong thing, is it?

Splurge: He says so, sir.

Sladder: But there was one here when we came.

Splurge: O, only country people, sir. I suppose they didn't know any better.

Sladder: Well, where do people grow vegetables, then?

Splurge: I asked the cook that, sir, and he said they don't grow them, they buy them.

Sladder: O, all right, then. Let him buy them, then. We must do the right thing.

[The hall-door bell rings.

Sladder: Hullo! Who's ringing my bell?

Splurge: That was the hall-door, wasn't it, sir?

Sladder: Yes. What are they ringing it for?

[Enter Butler.

Butler: Mr. Hippanthigh has called to see you, sir.

Sladder: Called to see me! What about?

Butler: He didn't inform me, sir.

Sladder: I say, Splurge, have I got to see him?

Splurge: I think so, sir. I think they call on one another like that in the country.

Sladder: Good lord, whatever for? (To Butler.) O, yes. I'll see him, I'll see him.

Butler: Very good, sir, I'll inform him so, sir.

[Exit.

Sladder: I say, Splurge, I suppose I've got to have a butler, and all that, eh?

Splurge: O, yes, sir. One at least. It's quite necessary.

Sladder: You—you couldn't have bought me a cheerfuller one now, could you?

Splurge: I'm afraid not, sir. If you were to take all this too lightheartedly, the other landowners would hardly like it, you know.

Sladder: O, well! O, well! What kind of man is this Hippanthigh that's coming?

Splurge: He's the man that quarrels with the bishop, sir.

Sladder: O, the curate. O, yes. I've heard about him. He's been here before, I think. Lawn tennis.

[Enter Butler.

Butler: Mr. Hippanthigh, sir.

[Enter Hippanthigh. Exit Butler.

Sladder: How do you do, Mr. Hippanthigh? How do you do? Pleased to see you.

Hippanthigh: I wished to speak with you, Mr. Sladder, if you will permit me.

Sladder: Certainly, Mr. Hippanthigh, certainly. Take a chair.

Hippanthigh: Thank you, sir. I think I would sooner stand.

Sladder: Please yourself. Please yourself.

Hippanthigh: I wished to speak with you alone, sir.

Sladder: Alone, eh? Alone? (Aside to Splurge.) It's usual, eh? (To Hippanthigh.) Alone, of course, yes. You've come to call, haven't you. (Exit Splurge.) Can I offer you—er, er—calling's not much in my line, you know—but what I mean is—will you have a bottle of champagne?

Hippanthigh: Mr. Sladder, I've come to speak with you because I believe it to be my duty to do so. I have hesitated to come, but when for particular reasons it became most painful to me to do so, then I knew that it was my clear duty, and I have come.

Sladder: O, yes, what they call a duty call. O, yes, quite so. Yes, exactly.

Hippanthigh: Mr. Sladder, many of my parishioners are acquainted with the thing that you sell as bread. (From the moment of Hippanthigh's entry till now Sladder, over-cheerful and anxious, has been struggling to do and say the right thing through all the complications of a visit; but now that the note of Business has been sounded he suddenly knows where he is and becomes alert and stern, and all there.)

Sladder: What? Virilo?

Hippanthigh: Yes. They pay more for it than they pay for bread, because they've been taught somehow, poor fools, that "they must have the best." They've been made to believe that it makes them, what they call virile, poor fools, and they're growing ill on it. Not so ill that I can prove anything, and the doctor daren't help me.

Sladder: Are you aware, Mr. Hippanthigh, that if you said in public what you're saying to me, you would go to prison for it, unless you can run to the very heavy fine—damages would be enormous.

Hippanthigh: I know that, Mr. Sladder, and so I have come to you as the last hope for my people.

Sladder: Are you aware, Mr. Hippanthigh, that you are making an attack upon business? I don't say that business is as pure as a surplice. But I do say that in business it is—as you may not understand—get on or go under; and without my business, or the business of the next man, who is doing his best to beat me, what would happen to trade? I don't know what's going to happen to England if you get rid of her trade, Mr. Hippanthigh.... Well?... When we're broke because we've been doing business with surplices on, what are the other countries going to do, Mr. Hippanthigh? Can you answer me that?

Hippanthigh: No, Mr. Sladder.

Sladder: Ah! So I've got the best of you?

Hippanthigh: Yes, Mr. Sladder. I'm not so clever as you.

Sladder: Glad you admit the point. As for cleverness it isn't that I've so much of that, but I use what I've got. Well, have you anything more to say?

Hippanthigh: Only to appeal to you, Mr. Sladder, on behalf of these poor people.

Sladder: Why. But you admitted one must have business, and that it can't be run like a tea-party. What more do you want?

Hippanthigh: I want you to spare them, Mr. Sladder.

Sladder: Spare them? Spare them? Why, what's the matter with them? I'm not killing them.

Hippanthigh: No, Mr. Sladder, you're not killing them. The mortality among children's a bit on the high side, but I wouldn't say that was entirely due to your bread. There's a good many minor ailments among the grown-up people, it seems to attack their digestion mostly, one can't trace each case to its source; but their health and their teeth aren't what they were when they had the pure wheaten bread.

Sladder: But there is wheat in my bread, prepared by a special process.

Hippanthigh: Ah! It's that special process that does it, I expect.

Sladder: Well, they needn't buy it if it isn't good.

Hippanthigh: Ah, they can't help themselves, poor fools; they've been taught to do it from their childhood up. Virilo, Bredo and Weeto, that are all so much better than bread, it's a choice between these three. Bread is never advertised, or God's good wheat.

Sladder: Mr. Hippanthigh, if I'm too much of a fool to sell my goods I suffer for it; if they're such fools as to buy my Virilo, they suffer for it—that is to say, you say they do—that is a natural law that may be new to you. But why should I suffer more than them? Besides, if I take my Virilo off the market just to oblige you, Mr. Hippanthigh, a little matter of £30,000 a year——

Hippanthigh: I—er——

Sladder: O, don't mention it. Any little trifle to oblige! But if I did, up would go the sales of Bredo and Weeto (which have nothing to do with my firm), and your friends wouldn't be any better for that let me tell you, for I happen to know how they're made.

Hippanthigh: I am not speaking of the wickedness of others. I come to appeal to you, Mr. Sladder, that for nothing that you do, our English race shall lose anything of its ancient strength, in its young men in their prime, or that they should grow infirm a day sooner than God intended, when He planned his course for man.

Ermyntrude (off): Father! Father!

[Sladder draws himself up, and stands erect to meet the decisive news that he has expected.

[Enter Ermyntrude.

Ermyntrude: Father! The mice have eaten the cheese.

Sladder: Ah! The public will—— O! (He has suddenly seen Hippanthigh).

Hippanthigh (solemnly): What new wickedness is this, Mr. Sladder? (All stand silent.) Good-bye, Mr. Sladder.

[He goes to the door, passing Ermyntrude. He looks at her and sighs as he goes. He passes Mrs. Sladder near the door, and bows in silence.

[Exit.

Ermyntrude: What have you been saying to Mr. Hippanthigh, father?

Sladder: Saying! He's been doing all the saying. He doesn't let you do much saying, does Hippanthigh.

Ermyntrude: But, father. What did he come to see you about?

Sladder: He came to call your poor old father all kinds of bad names, he did. It seems your old father is a wicked fellow, Ermyntrude.

Ermyntrude: O, father, I'm sure he never meant it.

[Hippanthigh goes by the window with a mournful face. Ermyntrude runs to the window and watches him till he is out of sight. She quietly waves her hand to Hippanthigh, unseen by her father.

Sladder: O, he meant it all right. He meant it. I'm sorry for that bishop of his that he quarrels with, if he lets him have it the way he went for your poor old father. O, dear me; dear me.

Ermyntrude: I don't think he quarrels with him, father. I think he only insists that there can be no such thing as eternal punishment. I think that's rather nice of him.

Sladder: I don't care a damn about eternal punishment one way or the other. But a man who quarrels with the head of his firm's a fool. If his bishop's keen on hell, he should push hell for all it's worth.

Ermyntrude: Y-e-s, I suppose he should. But, father, aren't you glad that my mice have eaten the new cheese? I thought you'd be glad, father.

Sladder: So I am, child. So I am. Only I don't feel quite so glad as I thought I was going to, now. I don't know why. He seems to have stroked me the wrong way somehow.

Ermyntrude: You said you'd give me whatever I liked.

Sladder: And so I will, child. So I will. A motor if you like, with chauffeur and footman complete. We can buy anything now, and I wouldn't grudge——

Ermyntrude: I don't want a motor, father.

Sladder: What would you like to have?

Ermyntrude: O, nothing, father, nothing. Only about that duke, father——

Sladder: What duke, Ermyntrude?

Ermyntrude: Mother said you wanted me to marry a duke some day, father.

Sladder: Well?

Ermyntrude: Well I—er—I don't think I quite want to, father.

Sladder: Ah! Quite so. Quite so. Quite so. And who did you think of marrying?

Ermyntrude: O, father.

Sladder: Well? (Ermyntrude is silent.) When I was his age, I had to work hard for my living.

Ermyntrude: O, father. How do you know what age he is?

Sladder: O, I guessed he was 82, going to be 83 next birthday. But I daresay I know nothing of the world. I daresay I may have been wrong.

Ermyntrude: O, father, he's young.

Sladder: Dear me, you don't say so. Dear me, you do surprise me. Well, well, well, well. We do live and learn. Don't we? And what might his name be now?

Ermyntrude: It's Mr. Hippanthigh, father.

Sladder: O-o-o! It's Mr. Hippanthigh, is it? O-ho, O-ho! (He touches a movable bell, shouting "Splurge!" To his daughter or rather to himself.) We'll see Mr. Hippanthigh.

Ermyntrude: What are you going to do, father?

Sladder: We'll see Mr. Hippanthigh. (Enter Splurge.) Splurge, run after Mr. Hippanthigh and bring him back. Say I've got something to say to him. He's gone that way. Quick!

Splurge: Yes, sir. [Exit.

Sladder: I've got something to say to him this time.

Ermyntrude: Father! What are you going to do?

Sladder: I'm going to give him What For.

Ermyntrude: But why, father?

Sladder: Because he's been giving it to your poor old father.