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

class="dialogue">Ermyntrude: Father——

Sladder: Well?

Ermyntrude: Be kind to him, father.

Sladder: O, I'll be kind to him. I'll be kind to him. Just you wait. I'll be kind to him!

Ermyntrude: But you wouldn't send him away, father. Father, for my sake you wouldn't do that?

Sladder: O, we haven't come to that yet.

Ermyntrude: But, but—you've sent for him.

Sladder: O, I've sent for him to give him What For. We'll come to the rest later.

Ermyntrude: But, when you do come to it, father.

Sladder: Why, when we do come to it, if the young man's any good, I'll not stand in my daughter's way——

Ermyntrude: O, thank you, father.

Sladder: And if he's no good (firmly) I'll protect my child from him.

Ermyntrude: But, father, I don't want to be protected.

Sladder: If a man's a man, he must be some good at something. Well, this man's chosen the clergyman job. I've nothing against the job, it's well enough paid at the top, but is this young man ever going to get there? Is he ever going to get off the bottom rung? How long has he been a curate?

Ermyntrude: Eight years, father.

Sladder: It's a long time.

Ermyntrude: But, father, he would get a vicarage if it wasn't for the bishop. The bishop stands in his way. It isn't nice of him.

Sladder: If I'd quarrelled with the head of my firm when I was his age, you wouldn't be getting proposals from a curate; no such luck. The dustman would have been more in your line.

Ermyntrude: But, father, he doesn't quarrel with the bishop. His conscience doesn't let him believe in eternal punishment, and so he speaks straight out. I do admire him so for it. He knows that if he was silent he'd have had a good living long ago.

Sladder: The wife of the head of my firm believed in spirit rapping. Did I go and tell her what an old fool she was? No, I brought her messages from another world as regular as a postman.

[Steps are heard outside the window.

Sladder: Run along, my dear, now.

Ermyntrude: Very well, father.

Sladder: The man that's going to look after my daughter must be able to look after himself. Otherwise I will, till a better man comes.

[Exit Ermyntrude. Hippanthigh and Splurge appear at the window. Hippanthigh enters and Splurge moves away.

Hippanthigh: You sent for me, Mr. Sladder?

Sladder: Y-e-s—y-e-s. Take a chair. Now, Mr. Hippanthigh, I haven't often been told off the way you told me off.

Hippanthigh: I felt it to be my duty, Mr. Sladder.

Sladder: Yes, quite so. Exactly. Well, it seems I'm a thoroughly bad old man, only fit to rob the poor, an out-and-out old ruffian.

Hippanthigh: I never said that.

Sladder: No. But you made me feel it. I never felt so bad about myself before, not as bad as that. But you, Mr. Hippanthigh, you were the high-falutin' angel with a new brass halo, out on its bank holiday. Now, how would clandestine love-making strike you, Mr. Hippanthigh? Would that be all right to your way of thinking?

Hippanthigh: Clandestine, Mr. Sladder? I hardly understand you.

Sladder: I understand that you have been making love to my daughter.

Hippanthigh: I admit it.

Sladder: Well, I haven't heard you say anything about it to me before. Did you tell her mother?

Hippanthigh: Er—no.

Sladder: Perhaps you told me. Very likely I've forgotten it.

Hippanthigh: No.

Sladder: Well, who did you tell?

Hippanthigh: We—we hadn't told anyone yet.

Sladder: Well, I think clandestine's the word for it, Mr. Hippanthigh. I haven't had time in my life to bother about the exact1 meanings of words or any nonsense of that sort, but I think clandestine's about the word for it.

Hippanthigh: It's a hard word, Mr. Sladder.

Sladder: May be. And who began using hard words? You came here and made me out a pickpocket, just because I use a few tasty little posters which sell my goods, and all the while you're trying on the sly to take a poor old man's daughter away from him. Well, Mr. Hippanthigh?

Hippanthigh: I—I never looked at it in that light before, Mr. Sladder. I never thought of it in that way. You have made me feel ashamed (he lowers his head), ashamed.

Sladder: Aha! Aha! I thought I would. Now you know what it's like when you make people ashamed of themselves. You don't like it when they do it to you. Aha! (Sladder is immensely pleased with himself.)

Hippanthigh: Mr. Sladder, I spoke to you as my conscience demanded, and you have shown me that I have done wrong in not speaking sooner about our engagement. I would have spoken to you, but I could not say that and the other thing in the same day. I meant to tell you soon;—well, I didn't, and I know it looks bad. I've done wrong and I admit it.

Sladder: Aha! (Still hugely pleased.)

Hippanthigh: But, Mr. Sladder, you would not on that account perhaps spoil your daughter's happiness, and take a terrible revenge on me. You would not withhold your consent to our——

Sladder: Wait a moment; we're coming to that. There's some bad animal that I've heard of that lives in France, and when folks attack it it defends itself. I've just been defending myself. I think I've shown you that you're no brand-new extra-gilt angel on the top of a spire.

Hippanthigh: O—I—er—never——

Sladder: Quite so. Well, now we come on to the other part. Very well. Those lords and people, they marry one another's daughters, because they know they're all no good. They're afraid it will get out like, and spread some of their damned mediæval ideas where they'll do harm. So they keep it in the family like. But we people who have had the sense to look after ourselves, we don't throw our daughters away to any young man that can't look after himself. See?

Hippanthigh: I assure you, Mr. Sladder, I should—er——

Sladder: She's my only daughter, and if any of my grandchildren are going to the work-house, they'll go to one where the master's salary is high, and they'll go there as master.

Hippanthigh: I am aware, Mr. Sladder, that I have very little money; as you would look at it, very little.

Sladder: It isn't the amount of money you've got as matters. The question is this: are you a young man as money is any good to? If I died and left you a million, would you know what to do with it? I've met men what wouldn't last more than six weeks on a million. Then they'd starve if nobody gave them another million. I'm not going to give my daughter to one of that sort.

Hippanthigh: I was third in the classical tripos at Cambridge, Mr. Sladder.

Sladder: I don't give a damn for classics; and I don't give a damn for Cambridge; and I don't know what a tripos is. But all I can tell you is that if I was fool enough to waste my time with classics, third wouldn't2 be good enough for me. No, Mr. Hippanthigh, you've chosen the church as your job, and I've nothing to say against your choice; its a free country, and I've nothing to say against your job; it's well enough paid at the top, only you don't look like getting there. I chose business as my job, there seemed more sense in it; but if I'd chosen the Church, I shouldn't have stuck as a curate. No, nor a bishop either. I wouldn't have had an archbishop ballyragging me and ordering me about. No. I'd have got to the top, and drawn big pay, and spent it.

Hippanthigh: But, Mr. Sladder, I could be a vicar to-morrow if my conscience would allow me to cease protesting against a certain point which the bishop holds to be——

Sladder: I know all about that. I don't care what it is that keeps you on the bottom rung of the ladder. Conscience, you say. Well, it's a different thing with every man. It's conscience with some, drink with others, sheer stupidity with most. It's pretty crowded already, that bottom rung, without me going and putting my daughter on it. Where do you suppose I'd be now if I'd let my conscience get in my way? Eh?

Hippanthigh: Mr. Sladder, I cannot alter my beliefs.

Sladder: Nobody asks you to. I only ask you to leave the bishop alone. He says one thing and you preach another whenever you get half a chance; it's enough to break up any firm.

Hippanthigh: Believing as I do that eternal punishment is incompatible with——

Sladder: Now, Mr. Hippanthigh, that's got to stop. I don't mind saying, now that I've given you What For, that you don't seem a bad young fellow: but my daughter's not going to marry on the bottom rung, and there's an end of that.

Hippanthigh: But, Mr. Sladder, can you bring yourself to believe in anything so terrible as eternal punishment, so contrary to——

Sladder: Me? No.

Hippanthigh: Then, how can you ask me to?

Sladder: That particular belief never happened to stand between me and the top of the tree. Many things did, but they're all down below me now, Mr. Hippanthigh, way down there (pointing) where I can hardly see them. You get off that bottom rung as I did years ago.

Hippanthigh: I cannot go back on all I've said.

Sladder: I don't want to make it hard for you. Only just say you believe in eternal punishment, and then give up talking about it. You may say it to me if you like. We'll have one other person present so that there's no going back on it, my daughter if you like. I'll let the bishop know, and he won't stand in your way any longer, but at present you force his hand. It's you or the rules of the firm.

Hippanthigh: I cannot.

Sladder: You can't just say to me and my daughter that you believe in eternal punishment, and leave me to go over to Axminster and put it right with the bishop?

Hippanthigh: I cannot say what I do not believe.

Sladder: Think. The bishop probably doesn't believe it himself. But you've been forcing his hand,—going out of your way to.

Hippanthigh: I cannot say it.

Sladder (rising): Mr. Hippanthigh, there's two kinds of men, those that succeed, those that don't. I know no other kind. You ...

Hippanthigh: I cannot go against my conscience.

Sladder: I don't care what your reason is. You are the second kind. I am sorry my daughter ever loved a man of that sort. I am sorry a man of that sort ever entered my house. I was a little, dirty, ragged boy. You make me see what I would be to-day if I had been a man of your kind. I would be dirty and ragged still. (His voice has been rising during this speech.)

[Enter Ermyntrude.

Ermyntrude: Father! What are you saying, father? I heard such loud voices.

[Hippanthigh stands silent and mournful.

Sladder: My child, I had foolish ideas for you once, but now I say that you are to marry a man, not a wretched, miserable little curate, who will be a wretched, miserable little curate all his life.

Ermyntrude: Father, I will not hear such words.

Sladder: I've given him every chance. I've given him more than every chance, but he prefers the bottom rung of the ladder; there we will leave him.

Ermyntrude: O, father! How can you be so cruel?

Sladder: It's not my fault, and it's not the bishop's fault. It's his own silly pig-headedness.

[He goes back to his chair.

Ermyntrude (going up to Hippanthigh): O, Charlie, couldn't you do what father wants?

Hippanthigh: No, no, I cannot. He wants me to go back on things I've said.

[Enter Mrs. Sladder carrying a