LITMIR.BIZ

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WARREN. [Calling from within the cottage.] Prad-dee! George! Tea-ea-ea-ea!

      CROFTS. [Hastily.] She’s calling us. [He hurries in. Praed shakes his head bodingly, and is following Crofts when he is hailed by a young gentleman who has just appeared on the common, and is making for the gate. He is pleasant, pretty, smartly dressed, cleverly good-for-nothing, not long turned 20, with a charming voice and agreeably disrespectful manners. He carries a light sporting magazine rifle.]

      THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN. Hallo! Praed!

      PRAED. Why, Frank Gardner! [Frank comes in and shakes hands cordially.] What on earth are you doing here?

      FRANK. Staying with my father.

      PRAED. The Roman father?

      FRANK. He’s rector here. I’m living with my people this autumn for the sake of economy. Things came to a crisis in July: the Roman father had to pay my debts. He’s stony broke in consequence; and so am I. What are you up to in these parts? do you know the people here?

      PRAED. Yes: I’m spending the day with a Miss Warren.

      FRANK. [Enthusiastically.] What! Do you know Vivie? Isn’t she a jolly girl? I’m teaching her to shoot with this. [Putting down the rifle.] I’m so glad she knows you: you’re just the sort of fellow she ought to know. [He smiles, and raises the charming voice almost to a singing tone as he exclaims.] It’s ever so jolly to find you here, Praed.

      PRAED. I’m an old friend of her mother. Mrs. Warren brought me over to make her daughter’s acquaintance.

      FRANK. The mother! Is she here?

      PRAED. Yes: inside, at tea.

      MRS. WARREN. [Calling from within.] Prad-dee-ee-ee-eee! The tea-cake’ll be cold.

      PRAED. [Calling.] Yes, Mrs. Warren. In a moment. I’ve just met a friend here.

      MRS. WARREN. A what?

      PRAED. [Louder.] A friend.

      MRS. WARREN. Bring him in.

      PRAED. All right. [To Frank.] Will you accept the invitation?

      FRANK. [Incredulous, but immensely amused.] Is that Vivie’s mother?

      PRAED. Yes.

      FRANK. By Jove! What a lark! Do you think she’ll like me?

      PRAED. I’ve no doubt you’ll make yourself popular, as usual. Come in and try. [Moving towards the house.]

      FRANK. Stop a bit. [Seriously.] I want to take you into my confidence.

      PRAED. Pray don’t. It’s only some fresh folly, like the barmaid at Redhill.

      FRANK. It’s ever so much more serious than that. You say you’ve only just met Vivie for the first time?

      PRAED. Yes.

      FRANK. [Rhapsodically.] Then you can have no idea what a girl she is. Such character! Such sense! And her cleverness! Oh, my eye, Praed, but I can tell you she is clever! And—need I add?—she loves me.

      CROFTS. [Putting his head out of the window.] I say, Praed: what are you about? Do come along. [He disappears.]

      FRANK. Hallo! Sort of chap that would take a prize at a dog show, ain’t he? Who’s he?

      PRAED. Sir George Crofts, an old friend of Mrs. Warren’s. I think we had better come in. [On their way to the porch they are interrupted by a call from the gate. Turning, they see an elderly clergyman looking over it.]

      THE CLERGYMAN. [Calling.] Frank!

      FRANK. Hallo! [To Praed.] The Roman father. [To The Clergyman.] Yes, gov’nor: all right: presently. [To Praed.] Look here, Praed: you’d better go in to tea. I’ll join you directly.

      PRAED. Very good. [He goes into the cottage. The clergyman remains outside the gate, with his hands on the top of it. The Rev. Samuel Gardner, a beneficed clergyman of the Established Church, is over 50. Externally he is pretentious, booming, noisy, important. Really he is that obsolescent phenomenon the fool of the family dumped on the Church by his father the patron, clamorously asserting himself as father and clergyman without being able to command respect in either capacity.]

      REV. S. Well, sir. Who are your friends here, if I may ask?

      FRANK. Oh, it’s all right, gov’nor! Come in.

      REV. S. No, sir; not until I know whose garden I am entering.

      FRANK. It’s all right. It’s Miss Warren’s.

      REV. S. I have not seen her at church since she came.

      FRANK. Of course not: she’s a third wrangler. Ever so intellectual. Took a higher degree than you did; so why should she go to hear you preach?

      REV. S. Don’t be disrespectful, sir.

      FRANK. Oh, it don’t matter: nobody hears us. Come in. [He opens the gate, unceremoniously pulling his father with it into the garden.] I want to introduce you to her. Do you remember the advice you gave me last July, gov’nor?

      REV. S. [Severely.] Yes. I advised you to conquer your idleness and flippancy, and to work your way into an honorable profession and live on it and not upon me.

      FRANK. No: that’s what you thought of afterwards. What you actually said was that since I had neither brains nor money, I’d better turn my good looks to account by marrying someone with both. Well, look here. Miss Warren has brains: you can’t deny that.

      REV. S. Brains are not everything.

      FRANK. No, of course not: there’s the money—

      REV. S. [Interrupting him austerely.] I was not thinking of money, sir. I was speaking of higher things. Social position, for instance.

      FRANK. I don’t care a rap about that.

      REV. S. But I do, sir.

      FRANK. Well, nobody wants you to marry her. Anyhow, she has what amounts to a high Cambridge degree; and she seems to have as much money as she wants.

      REV. S. [Sinking into a feeble vein of humor.] I greatly doubt whether she has as much money as you will want.

      FRANK. Oh, come: I haven’t been so very extravagant. I live ever so quietly; I don’t drink; I don’t bet much; and I never go regularly to the razzle-dazzle as you did when you were my age.

      REV. S. [Booming hollowly.] Silence, sir.

      FRANK. Well, you told me yourself, when I was making every such an ass of myself about the barmaid at Redhill, that you once offered a woman fifty pounds for the letters you wrote to her when—

      REV. S. [Terrified.] Sh-sh-sh, Frank, for Heaven’s sake! [He looks round apprehensively Seeing no one within earshot he plucks up courage to boom again, but more subduedly.] You are taking an ungentlemanly advantage of what I confided to you for your own good, to save you from an error you would have repented all your life long. Take warning by your father’s follies, sir; and don’t make them an excuse for your own.

      FRANK. Did you ever hear the story of the Duke of Wellington and his letters?

      REV. S. No, sir; and I don’t want to hear it.

      FRANK. The old Iron Duke didn’t throw away fifty pounds: not he. He just wrote: “Dear Jenny: publish and be damned! Yours affectionately, Wellington.” That’s what you should have done.

      REV. S. [Piteously.] Frank, my boy: when I wrote those letters I put myself into that woman’s power. When I told you about them I put myself, to some extent, I am sorry to say, in your power. She refused my money with these words, which I shall never forget. “Knowledge is power” she said; “and I never sell power.” That’s more than twenty years ago; and she has never made use of her power or caused me a moment’s uneasiness. You are behaving worse to me than she did, Frank.

      FRANK. Oh yes I

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