Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (315 page)

FANNY. No, I don’t believe they ever will.

VERNON. Do you know, I sometimes think that you don’t like them.
[Fanny makes a movement.] Of course, they are a bit bossy, I admit.
But all that comes from their devotion, their -

FANNY. The wonder to me is that, brought up among them, admiring them as you do, you never thought of marrying one of them.

VERNON [staggered.] Marrying them?

FANNY. I didn’t say “them.” I said “ONE of them.” There’s Honoria. She’s pretty enough, anyhow. So’s Alice, Charles Bennet’s daughter, and Bertha and Grace — all of them beautiful. And what’s even better still — good. [She says it viciously.] Didn’t you ever think of them?

VERNON. Well [laughs] — well, one hardly marries into one’s own kitchen.

FANNY. Isn’t that rather snobbish? You say they’re more like friends than servants. They’ve lived with your people, side by side, for three generations, doing their duty, honourably. There’s never been a slur upon their name. They’re “high-principled.” You know it. They’ve better manners than nine-tenths of your smart society, and they’re healthy. What’s wrong with them — even from a lord’s point of view?

VERNON [recovering himself]. Well, don’t pitch into me about it. It’s your fault if I didn’t marry them — I mean one of them. [He laughs, puts his empty cup back on the table.] Maybe I’d have thought about it — if I hadn’t met you.

FANNY [takes his hand in hers]. I wish you hadn’t asked Newte any questions about me. It would have been so nice to feel that you had married me — just because you couldn’t help it — just because I was I and nothing else mattered.

VERNON. Let’s forget I ever did. [He kneels beside her.] I didn’t do it for my own sake, as you know. A MAN in my position has to think of other people. His wife has to take her place in society. People insist upon knowing something about her. It’s not enough for the stupid “County” that she’s the cleverest, most bewilderingly beautiful, bewitching lady in the land.

FANNY. And how long will you think all that?

VERNON. For ever, and ever, and ever.

FANNY. Oh, you dear boy. [She kisses him.] You don’t know how a woman loves the man she loves to love her. [Laughs.] Isn’t that complicated?

VERNON. Not at all. We’re just the same. We love to love the woman we love.

FANNY. Provided the “County” will let us. And the County has said:
A man may not marry his butler’s niece.

VERNON [laughing]. You’ve got butlers on the brain. If ever I do run away with my own cook or under-housemaid, it will be your doing.

FANNY. You haven’t the pluck! The “County” would laugh at you. You men are so frightened of being laughed at.

VERNON [he rises]. Well, if it saves us from making asses of ourselves -

FANNY. Wasn’t there a niece of old Bennet’s, a girl who had been brought up abroad, and who WASN’T a domestic servant — never had been- -who stayed with them here, at the gardener’s cottage, for a short time, some few years ago?

VERNON. You mean poor Rose Bennet’s daughter — the one who ran away and married an organ-grinder.

FANNY. An organ-grinder?

VERNON. Something of that sort — yes. They had her over; did all they could. A crazy sort of girl; used to sing French ballads on the village green to all the farm labourers she could collect. Shortened poor Bennet’s life by about ten years. [Laughs.] But why? Not going to bully me for not having fallen in love with her, are you? Because that really WASN’T my fault. I never even saw her. ’Twas the winter we spent in Rome. She bolted before we got back. Never gave me a chance.

FANNY. I accept the excuse. [Laughs.] No, I was merely wondering what the “County” would have done if by any chance you had married HER. Couldn’t have said you were marrying into your own kitchen in her case, because she was never IN your kitchen — absolutely refused to enter it, I’m told.

VERNON [laughs]. It would have been a “nice point,” as they say in legal circles. If people had liked her, they’d have tried to forget that her cousins had ever been scullery-maids. If not, they’d have taken good care that nobody did.

Bennet enters. He brings some cut flowers, with the “placing” of which he occupies himself.

BENNET. I did not know your lordship had returned.

VERNON. Found a telegram waiting for me in the village. What’s become of that niece of yours, Bennet — your sister Rose’s daughter, who was here for a short time and ran away again? Ever hear anything about her?

BENNET [very quietly he turns, lets his eyes for a moment meet Fanny’s. Then answers as he crosses to the windows]. The last I heard about her was that she was married.

VERNON. Satisfactorily?

BENNET. Looking at it from her point of view — most satisfactorily.

VERNON [laughs]. But looking at it from his — more doubtful?

BENNET. She was not without her attractions. Her chief faults, I am inclined to think, were those arising from want of discipline in youth. I have hopes that it is not even yet too late to root out from her nature the weeds of indiscretion.

VERNON. And you think he is the man to do it?

BENNET. Perhaps not. But fortunately there are those about her fully alive to the duty devolving upon them.

VERNON. Um. Sounds a little bit like penal servitude for the poor girl, the way you put it, Bennet.

BENNET. Even penal servitude may be a blessing, if it serves to correct a stubborn spirit.

VERNON. We’ll have to make you a J.P., Bennet. Must be jolly careful I don’t ever get tried before you. [Laughs.] Is that the cart?

BENNET [he looks out through the window]. Yes, your lordship.

VERNON [he takes up his cap]. I may be bringing someone back with me. [To Fanny, who throughout has remained seated.] Why not put on your hat — come with me?

FANNY [she jumps up, delighted]. Shall I?

BENNET. Your ladyship is not forgetting that to-day is Wednesday?

FANNY. What’s the odds. There’s nobody to call. Everybody is still in town.

BENNET. It has always been the custom of the Lady Bantocks, when in residence, to be at home on Wednesdays.

VERNON. Perhaps better not. It may cause talk; if, by chance, anybody does come. I was forgetting it was Wednesday. [Fanny sits again.] I shan’t do anything without consulting you. Good-bye.

FANNY. Good-bye.

Vernon goes out.

BENNET. You think it wise, discussing with his lordship the secret history of the Bennet family?

FANNY. What do you mean by telling him my father was an organ- grinder? If the British public knew the difference between music and a hurdy-gurdy, he would have kept a butler of his own.

BENNET. I am not aware of having mentioned to his lordship that you ever to my knowledge even had a father. It is not my plan — for the present at all events — to inform his lordship anything about your family. Take care I am not forced to.

FANNY. Because my father, a composer who had his work performed at the Lamoureux Concerts — as I can prove, because I’ve got the programme — had the misfortune to marry into a family of lackeys — I’m not talking about my mother: she was never really one of you. SHE had the soul of an artist.

BENNET [white with suppressed fury; he is in front of her; his very look is enough to silence her]. Now you listen to me, my girl, once and for all. I told you the night of your arrival that whether this business was going to prove a pleasant or an unpleasant one depended upon you. You make it an easy one — for your own sake. With one word I can bring your house of cards about your ears. I’ve only to tell him the truth for him to know you as a cheat and liar. [She goes to speak; again he silences her.] You listen to me. You’ve seen fit to use strong language; now I’m using strong language. This BOY, who has married you in a moment of impulse, what does HE know about the sort of wife a man in his position needs? What do YOU? made to sing for your living on the Paris boulevards — whose only acquaintance with the upper classes has been at shady restaurants.

FANNY. He didn’t WANT a woman of his own class. He told me so. It was because I wasn’t a colourless, conventional puppet with a book of etiquette in place of a soul that he was first drawn towards me.

BENNET. Yes. At twenty-two, boys like unconventionality. Men don’t: they’ve learnt its true name, vulgarity. Do you think I’ve stood behind English society for forty years without learning anything about it! What you call a colourless puppet is what WE call an English lady. And that you’ve got to learn to be. You talk of “lackeys.” If your mother, my poor sister Rose, came from a family of “lackeys” there would be no hope for you. With her blood in your veins the thing can be done. We Bennets — [he draws himself up] — we serve. We are not lackeys.

FANNY. All right. Don’t you call my father an organ-grinder, and I won’t call you lackeys. Unfortunately that doesn’t end the trouble.

BENNET. The trouble can easily be ended.

FANNY. Yes. By my submitting to be ruled in all things for the remainder of my life by my own servants.

BENNET. Say “relations,” and it need not sound so unpleasant.

FANNY. Yes, it would. It would sound worse. One can get rid of one’s servants. [She has crossed towards the desk. Her cheque-book lies there half hidden under other papers. It catches her eye. Her hand steals unconsciously towards it. She taps it idly with her fingers. It is all the work of a moment. Nothing comes of it. Just the idea passes through her brain — not for the first time. She does nothing noticeable — merely stands listless while one might count half a dozen — then turns to him again.] Don’t you think you’re going it a bit too strong, all of you? I’m not a fool. I’ve got a lot to learn, I know. I’d be grateful for help. What you’re trying to do is to turn me into a new woman entirely.

BENNET. Because that is the only WAY to help you. Men do not put new wine into old bottles.

FANNY. Oh, don’t begin quoting Scripture. I want to discuss the thing sensibly. Don’t you see it can’t be done? I can’t be anybody else than myself. I don’t want to.

BENNET. My girl, you’ve GOT to be. Root and branch, inside and outside, before you’re fit to be Lady Bantock, mother of the Lord Bantocks that are to be, you’ve got to be a changed woman.

A pause.

FANNY. And it’s going to be your job, from beginning to end — yours and the rest of you. What I wear and how I look is Jane’s affair. My prayers will be for what Aunt Susannah thinks I stand in need of. What I eat and drink and say and do YOU will arrange for me. And when you die, Cousin Simeon, I suppose, will take your place. And when Aunt Susannah dies, it will merely be a change to Aunt Amelia. And if Jane ever dies, Honoria will have the dressing and the lecturing of me. And so on and so on, world without end, for ever and ever, Amen.

BENNET. Before that time, you will, I shall hope, have learnt sufficient sense to be grateful to us. [He goes out.]

FANNY [she turns — walks slowly back towards the tea-table. Halfway she pauses, and leaning over the back of a chair regards in silence for a while the portrait of the first Lady Bantock]. I do wish I could tell what you were saying.

The door opens. The Misses Wetherell come in. They wear the same frocks that they wore in the first act. They pause. Fanny is still gazing at the portrait.

THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL. Don’t you notice it, dear?

THE YOUNGER MISS WETHERELL. Yes. There really is.

THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL. It struck me the first day. [To Fanny, who has turned] Your likeness, dear, to Lady Constance. It’s really quite remarkable.

FANNY. You think so?

THE YOUNGER MISS WETHERELL. It’s your expression — when you are serious.

FANNY [laughs]. I must try to be more serious.

THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL. It will come, dear.

They take their places side by side on the settee.

THE YOUNGER MISS WETHERELL [to her sister, with a pat of the hand]. In good time. It’s so nice to have her young. I wonder if anybody’ll come this afternoon.

THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL [to Fanny]. You see, dear, most of the county people are still in town.

FANNY [who is pouring out tea]. I’m not grumbling.

THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL. Oh, you’ll like them, dear. The
Cracklethorpes especially. [To her sister for confirmation] Bella
Cracklethorpe is so clever.

THE YOUNGER MISS WETHERELL. And the Engells. She’ll like the Engells. All the Engell girls are so pretty. [Fanny brings over two cups of tea.] Thank you, dear.

THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL [as she takes her cup — patting Fanny’s hand]. And they’ll like you, dear, ALL of them.

FANNY [returning to table]. I hope so.

THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL. It’s wonderful, dear — you won’t mind my saying it? — how you’ve improved.

THE YOUNGER MISS WETHERELL. Of course it was such a change for you. And at first [turns to her sister] we were a little anxious about her, weren’t we?

Fanny has returned to them with the cake-basket.

THE ELDER MISS WETHERELL [as she takes a piece]. Bennet [she lingers on the name as that of an authority] was saying only yesterday that he had great hopes of you.

THE YOUNGER MISS WETHERELL [Fanny is handing the basket to her].
Thank you, dear.