Chapter 8

WEDGECROFT. Trebell ... if the inquest to-morrow had put you out of action ...

TREBELL. Should I have grown a beard and travelled abroad and after ten years timidly tried to climb my way back into politics? When public opinion takes its heel from your face it keeps it for your finger-tips. After twenty years to be forgiven by your more broad-minded friends and tolerated as a dotard by a new generation....

WEDGECROFT. Nonsense. What age are you now ... forty-six ... forty-seven?

TREBELL. Well ... let's instance a good man. Gladstone had done his best work by sixty-five. Then he began to be popular. Think of his last years of oratory.

_He has gone to his table and now very methodically starts to tidy his papers,_ WEDGECROFT _still watching him._

WEDGECROFT. You'd have had to thank Heaven for a little that there were more lives than one to lead.

TREBELL. That's another of your faults, Gilbert ... it's a comfort just now to enumerate them. You're an anarchist ... a kingdom to yourself. You make little treaties with Truth and with Beauty, and what can disturb you? I'm a part of the machine I believe in. If my life as I've made it is to be cut short ... the rest of me shall walk out of the world and slam the door ... with the noise of a pistol shot.

WEDGECROFT. [_Concealing some uneasiness._] Then I'm glad it's not to be cut short. You and your cabinet rank and your disestablishment bill!

TREBELL _starts to enjoy his secret._

TREBELL. Yes ... our minds have been much relieved within the last half hour, haven't they?

WEDGECROFT. I scribbled Horsham a note in a messenger office and sent it as soon as O'Connell had left me.

TREBELL. He'd be glad to get that.

WEDGECROFT. He has been most kind about the whole thing.

TREBELL. Oh, he means well.

WEDGECROFT. [_Following up his fancied advantage._] But, my friend ... suicide whilst of unsound mind would never have done.... The hackneyed verdict hits the truth, you know.

TREBELL. You think so?

WEDGECROFT. I don't say there aren't excuses enough in this miserable world, but fundamentally ... no sane person will destroy life.

TREBELL. [_His thoughts shifting their plane._] Was she so very mad? I'm not thinking of her own death.

WEDGECROFT. Don't brood, Trebell. Your mind isn't healthy yet about her and--

TREBELL. And my child.

_Even_ WEDGECROFT'S _kindness is at fault before the solemnity of this._

WEDGECROFT. Is that how you're thinking of it?

TREBELL. How else? It's very inexplicable ... this sense of fatherhood. [_The eyes of his mind travel down--what vista of possibilities. Then he shakes himself free._] Let's drop the subject. To finish the list of shortcomings, you're a bit of an artist too ... therefore I don't think you'll understand.

WEDGECROFT. [_Successfully decoyed into argument._] Surely an artist is a man who understands.

TREBELL. Everything about life, but not life itself. That's where art fails a man.

WEDGECROFT. That's where everything but living fails a man. [_Drifting into introspection himself._] Yes, it's true. I can talk cleverly and I've written a book ... but I'm barren. [_Then the healthy mind re-asserts itself._] No, it's not true. Our thoughts are children ... and marry and intermarry. And we're peopling the world ... not badly.

TREBELL. Well ... either life is too little a thing to matter or it's so big that such specks of it as we may be are of no account. These are two points of view. And then one has to consider if death can't be sometimes the last use made of life.

_There is a tone of menace in this which recalls_ WEDGECROFT _to the present trouble._

WEDGECROFT. I doubt the virtue of sacrifice ... or the use of it.

TREBELL. How else could I tell Horsham that my work matters? Does he think so now?... not he.

WEDGECROFT. You mean if they'd had to throw you over?

_Once again_ TREBELL _looks up with that secretive smile._

TREBELL. Yes ... if they'd had to.

WEDGECROFT. [_Unreasonably nervous, so he thinks._] My dear fellow, Horsham would have thought it was the shame and disgrace if you'd shot yourself after the inquest. That's the proper sentimental thing for you so-called strong men to do on like occasions. Why, if your name were to come out to-morrow, your best meaning friends would be sending you pistols by post, requesting you to use them like a gentleman. Horsham would grieve over ten dinner-tables in succession and then return to his philosophy. One really mustn't waste a life trying to shock polite politicians. There'd even be a suspicion of swagger in it.

TREBELL. Quite so ... the bomb that's thrown at their feet must be something otherwise worthless.

FRANCES _comes in quickly, evidently in search of her brother. Though she has not been crying, her eyes are wide with grief._

FRANCES. Oh, Henry ... I'm so glad you're still up. [_She notices_ WEDGECROFT.] How d'you do, Doctor?

TREBELL. [_Doubling his mask of indifference._] Meistersinger's over early.

FRANCES. Is it?

TREBELL. Not much past twelve yet.

FRANCES. [_The little gibe lost on her._] It was Tristan to-night. I'm quite upset. I heard just as I was coming away ... Amy O'Connell's dead. [_Both men hold their breath._ TREBELL _is the first to find control of his and give the cue._]

TREBELL. Yes ... Wedgecroft has just told me.

FRANCES. She was only taken ill last week ... it's so extraordinary. [_She remembers the doctor._] Oh ... have you been attending her?

WEDGECROFT. Yes.

FRANCES. I hear there's to be an inquest.

WEDGECROFT. Yes.

FRANCES. But what has been the matter?

TREBELL. [_Sharply forestalling any answer._] You'll know to-morrow.

FRANCES. [_The little snub almost bewildering her._] Anything private? I mean....

TREBELL. No ... I'll tell you. Don't make Gilbert repeat a story twice.... He's tired with a good day's work.

WEDGECROFT. Yes ... I'll be getting away.

FRANCES _never heeds this flash of a further meaning between the two men._

FRANCES. And I meant to have gone to see her to-day. Was the end very sudden? Did her husband arrive in time?

WEDGECROFT. Yes.

FRANCES. They didn't get on ... he'll be frightfully upset.

TREBELL _resists a hideous temptation to laugh._

WEDGECROFT. Good night, Trebell.

TREBELL. Good night, Gilbert. Many thanks.

_There is enough of a caress in_ TREBELL'S _tone to turn_ FRANCES _towards their friend, a little remorseful for treating him so casually, now as always._

FRANCES. He's always thanking you. You're always doing things for him.

WEDGECROFT. Good night. [_Seeing the tears in her eyes._] Oh, don't grieve.

FRANCES. One shouldn't be sorry when people die, I know. But she liked me more than I liked her ... [_This time_ TREBELL _does laugh, silently._] ... so I somehow feel in her debt and unable to pay now.

TREBELL. [_An edge on his voice._] Yes ... people keep on dying at all sorts of ages, in all sorts of ways. But we seem never to get used to it ... narrow-minded as we are.

WEDGECROFT. Don't you talk nonsense.

TREBELL. [_One note sharper yet._] One should occasionally test one's sanity by doing so. If we lived in the logical world we like to believe in, I could also prove that black was white. As it is ... there are more ways of killing a cat than hanging it.

WEDGECROFT. Had I better give you a sleeping draught?

FRANCES. Are you doctoring him for once? Henry, have you at last managed to overwork yourself?

TREBELL. No ... I started the evening by a charming little dinner at the Van Meyer's ... sat next to Miss Grace Cutler, who is writing a _vie intime_ of Louis Quinze and engaged me with anecdotes of the same.

FRANCES. A champion of her sex, whom I do not like.

WEDGECROFT. She's writing such a book to prove that women are equal to anything.

_He goes towards the door and_ FRANCES _goes with him._ TREBELL _never turns his head._

TREBELL. I shall not come and open the door for you ... but mind you shut it.

FRANCES _comes back._

FRANCES. Henry ... this is dreadful about that poor little woman.

TREBELL. An unwelcome baby was arriving. She got some quack to kill her.

_These exact words are like a blow in the face to her, from which, being a woman of brave common sense, she does not shrink._

TREBELL. What do you say to that?

_She walks away from him, thinking painfully._

FRANCES. She had never had a child. There's the common-place thing to say.... Ungrateful little fool! But....

TREBELL. If you had been in her place?

FRANCES. [_Subtly._] I have never made the mistake of marrying. She grew frightened, I suppose. Not just physically frightened. How can a man understand?

TREBELL. The fear of life ... do you think it was ... which is the beginning of all evil?

FRANCES. A woman must choose what her interpretation of life is to be ... as a man must too in his way ... as you and I have chosen, Henry.

TREBELL. [_Asking from real interest in her._] Was yours a deliberate choice and do you never regret it?

FRANCES. [_Very simply and clearly._] Perhaps one does nothing quite deliberately and for a definite reason. My state has its compensations ... if one doesn't value them too highly. I've travelled in thought over all this question. You mustn't blame a woman for wishing not to bear children. But ... well, if one doesn't like the fruit one mustn't cultivate the flower. And I suppose that saying condemns poor Amy ... condemned her to death ... [_Then her face hardens as she concentrates her meaning._] and brands most men as ... let's unsentimentally call it illogical, doesn't it?

_He takes the thrust in silence._

TREBELL. Did you notice the light in my window as you came in?

FRANCES. Yes ... in both as I got out of the cab. Do you want the curtains drawn back?

TREBELL. Yes ... don't touch them.

_He has thrown himself into his chair by the fire. She lapses into thought again._

FRANCES. Poor little woman.

TREBELL. [_In deep anger._] Well, if women will be little and poor....

_She goes to him and slips an arm over his shoulder._

FRANCES. What is it you're worried about ... if a mere sister may ask?

TREBELL. [_Into the fire._] I want to think. I haven't thought for years.

FRANCES. Why, you have done nothing else.

TREBELL. I've been working out problems in legal and political algebra.

FRANCES. You want to think of yourself.

TREBELL. Yes.

FRANCES. [_Gentle and ironic._] Have you ever, for one moment, thought in that sense of anyone else?

TREBELL. Is that a complaint?

FRANCES. The first in ten years' housekeeping.

TREBELL. No, I never have ... but I've never thought selfishly either.

FRANCES. That's a paradox I don't quite understand.

TREBELL. Until women do they'll remain where they are ... and what they are.

FRANCES. Oh, I know you hate us.

TREBELL. Yes, dear sister, I'm afraid I do. And I hate your influence on men ... compromise, tenderness, pity, lack of purpose. Women don't know the values of things, not even their own value.

_For a moment she studies him, wonderingly._

FRANCES. I'll take up the counter-accusation to-morrow. Now I'm tired and I'm going to bed. If I may insult you by mothering you, so should you. You look tired and I've seldom seen you.

TREBELL. I'm waiting up for a message.

FRANCES. So late?

TREBELL. It's a matter of life and death.

FRANCES. Are you joking?

TREBELL. Yes. If you want to spoil me find me a book to read.

FRANCES. What will you have?

TREBELL. Huckleberry Finn. It's on a top shelf towards the end somewhere ... or should be.

_She finds the book. On her way back with it she stops and shivers._

FRANCES. I don't think I shall sleep to-night. Poor Amy O'Connell!

TREBELL. [_Curiously._] Are you afraid of death?

FRANCES. [_With humorous stoicism._] It will be the end of me, perhaps.

_She gives him the book, with its red cover; the '86 edition, a boy's friend evidently. He fingers it familiarly._

TREBELL. Thank you. Mark Twain's a jolly fellow. He has courage ... comic courage. That's what's wanted. Nothing stands against it. You be-little yourself by laughing ... then all this world and the last and the next grow little too ... and so you grow great again. Switch off some light, will you?

FRANCES. [_Clicking off all but his reading lamp._] So?

TREBELL. Thanks. Good night, Frankie.

_She turns at the door, with a glad smile._

FRANCES. Good night. When did you last use that nursery name?

_Then she goes, leaving him still fingering the book, but looking into the fire and far beyond. Behind him through the open window one sees how cold and clear the night is._

* * * * *

_At eight in the morning he is still here. His lamp is out, the fire is out and the book laid aside. The white morning light penetrates every crevice of the room and shows every line on_ TREBELL'S _face. The spirit of the man is strained past all reason. The door opens suddenly and_ FRANCES _comes in, troubled, nervous. Interrupted in her dressing, she has put on some wrap or other._

FRANCES. Henry ... Simpson says you've not been to bed all night.

_He turns his head and says with inappropriate politeness_--

TREBELL. No. Good morning.

FRANCES. Oh, my dear ... what is wrong?

TREBELL. The message hasn't come ... and I've been thinking.

FRANCES. Why don't you tell me? [_He turns his head away._] I think you haven't the right to torture me.

TREBELL. Your sympathy would only blind me towards the facts I want to face.

SIMPSON, _the maid, undisturbed in her routine, brings in the morning's letters._ FRANCES _rounds on her irritably._

FRANCES. What is it, Simpson?

MAID. The letters, Ma'am.

TREBELL _is on his feet at that._

TREBELL. Ah ... I want them.

FRANCES. [_Taking the letters composedly enough._] Thank you.

SIMPSON _departs and_ TREBELL _comes to her for his letters. She looks at him with baffled affection._

FRANCES. Can I do nothing? Oh, Henry!

TREBELL. Help me to open my letters.

FRANCES. Don't you leave them to Mr. Kent?

TREBELL. Not this morning.

FRANCES. But there are so many.

TREBELL. [_For the first time lifting his voice from its dull monotony._] What a busy man I was.

FRANCES. Henry ... you're a little mad.

TREBELL. Do you find me so? That's interesting.

FRANCES. [_With the ghost of a smile._] Well ... maddening.

_By this time he is sitting at his table; she near him watching closely. They halve the considerable post and start to open it._

TREBELL. We arrange them in three piles ... personal ... political ... and preposterous.

FRANCES. This is an invitation ... the Anglican League.

TREBELL. I can't go.

_She looks sideways at him, as he goes on mechanically tearing the envelopes._

FRANCES. I heard you come upstairs about two o'clock.

TREBELL. That was to dip my head in water. Then I made an instinctive attempt to go to bed ... got my tie off even.

FRANCES. [_Her anxiety breaking out._] If you'd tell me that you're only ill....

TREBELL. [_Forbiddingly commonplace._] What's that letter? Don't fuss ... and remember that abnormal conduct is sometimes quite rational.

FRANCES _returns to her task with misty eyes._

FRANCES. It's from somebody whose son can't get into something.

TREBELL. The third heap ... Kent's ... the preposterous. [_Talking on with steady monotony._] But I saw it would not do to interrupt that logical train of thought which reached definition about half past six. I had then been gleaning until you came in.

FRANCES. [_Turning the neat little note in her hand._] This is from Lord Horsham. He writes his name small at the bottom of the envelope.

TREBELL. [_Without a tremor._] Ah ... give it me.

_He opens this as he has opened the others, carefully putting the envelope to one side._ FRANCES _has ceased for the moment to watch him._

FRANCES. That's Cousin Robert's handwriting. [_She puts a square envelope at his hand._] Is a letter marked private from the Education Office political or personal?

_By this he has read_ HORSHAM'S _letter twice. So he tears it up and speaks very coldly._

TREBELL. Either. It doesn't matter.

_In the silence her fears return._

FRANCES. Henry, it's a foolish idea ... I suppose I have it because I hardly slept for thinking of her. Your trouble is nothing to do with Amy O'Connell, is it?

TREBELL. [_His voice strangled in his throat._] Her child should have been my child too.

FRANCES. [_Her eyes open, the whole landscape of her mind suddenly clear._] Oh, I ... no, I didn't think so ... but....

TREBELL. [_Dealing his second blow as remorselessly as dealt to him._] Also I'm not joining the new Cabinet, my dear sister.

FRANCES. [_Her thoughts rushing now to the present--the future._] Not! Because of...? Do people know? Will they...? You didn't...?

_As mechanically as ever he has taken up_ COUSIN ROBERT'S _letter and, in some sense, read it. Now he recapitulates, meaninglessly, that his voice may just deaden her pain and his own._

TREBELL. Robert says ... that we've not been to see them for some time ... but that now I'm a greater man than ever I must be very busy. The vicarage has been painted and papered throughout and looks much fresher. Mary sends you her love and hopes you have no return of the rheumatism. And he would like to send me the proof sheets of his critical commentary on First Timothy ... for my alien eye might possibly detect some logical lapses. Need he repeat to me his thankfulness at my new attitude upon Disestablishment ... or assure me again that I have his prayers. Could we not go and stay there only for a few days? Possibly his opinion--

_She has borne this cruel kindness as long as she can and she breaks out...._

FRANCES. Oh ... don't ... don't!

_He falls from his seeming callousness to the very blankness of despair._

TREBELL. No, we'll leave that ... and the rest ... and everything.

_Her agony passes._

FRANCES. What do you mean to do?

TREBELL. There's to be no public scandal.

FRANCES. Why has Lord Horsham thrown you over then ... or hasn't that anything to do with it?

TREBELL. It has to do with it.

FRANCES. [_Lifting her voice; some tone returning to it._] Unconsciously ... I've known for years that this sort of thing might happen to you.

TREBELL. Why?

FRANCES. Power over men and women and contempt for them! Do you think they don't take their revenge sooner or later?

TREBELL. Much good may it do them!

FRANCES. Human nature turns against you ... by instinct ... in self-defence.

TREBELL. And my own human-nature!

FRANCES. [_Shocked into great pity, by his half articulate pain._] Yes ... you must have loved her, Henry ... in some odd way. I'm sorry for you both.

TREBELL. I'm hating her now ... as a man can only hate his own silliest vices.

FRANCES. [_Flashing into defence._] That's wrong of you. If you thought of her only as a pretty little fool.... Bearing your child ... all her womanly life belonged to you ... and for that time there was no other sort of life in her. So she became what you thought her.

TREBELL. That's not true.

FRANCES. It's true enough ... it's true of men towards women. You can't think of them through generations as one thing and then suddenly find them another.

TREBELL. [_Hammering at his fixed idea._] She should have brought that child into the world.

FRANCES. You didn't love her enough!

TREBELL. I didn't love her at all.

FRANCES. Then why should she value your gift?

TREBELL. For its own sake.

FRANCES. [_Turning away._] It's hopeless ... you don't understand.

TREBELL. [_Helpless; almost like a deserted child._] I've been trying to ... all through the night.

FRANCES. [_Turning back enlightened a little._] That's more the trouble then than the Cabinet question?

_He shakes himself to his feet and begins to pace the room; his keenness coming back to him, his brow knitting again with the delight of thought._

TREBELL. Oh ... as to me against the world ... I'm fortified with comic courage. [_Then turning on her like any examining professor._] Now which do you believe ... that Man is the reformer, or that the Time brings forth such men as it needs and lobster-like can grow another claw?

FRANCES. [_Watching this new mood carefully._] I believe that you'll be missed from Lord Horsham's Cabinet.

TREBELL. The hand-made statesman and his hand-made measure! They were out of place in that pretty Tory garden. Those men are the natural growth of the time. Am I?

FRANCES. Just as much. And wasn't your bill going to be such a good piece of work? That can't be thrown away ... wasted.

TREBELL. Can one impose a clever idea upon men and women? I wonder.

FRANCES. That rather begs the question of your very existence, doesn't it?

_He comes to a standstill._

TREBELL. I know.

_His voice shows her that meaning in her words and beyond it a threat. She goes to him, suddenly shaking with fear._

FRANCES. Henry, I didn't mean that.

TREBELL. You think I've a mind to put an end to that same?

FRANCES. [_Belittling her fright._] No ... for how unreasonable....

TREBELL. In view of my promising past. I've stood for success, Fanny; I still stand for success. I could still do more outside the Cabinet than the rest of them, inside, will do. But suddenly I've a feeling the work would be barren. [_His eyes shift beyond her; beyond the room._] What is it in your thoughts and actions which makes them bear fruit? Something that the roughest peasant may have in common with the best of us intellectual men ... something that a dog might have. It isn't successful cleverness.

_She stands ... his trouble beyond her reach._

FRANCES. Come now ... you've done very well with your life.

TREBELL. Do you know how empty I feel of all virtue at this moment?

_He leaves her. She must bring him back to the plane on which she can help him._

FRANCES. We must think what's best to be done ... now ... and for the future.

TREBELL. Why, I could go on earning useless money at the Bar ... think how nice that would be. I could blackmail the next judgeship out of Horsham. I think I could even smash his Disestablishment Bill ... and perhaps get into the next Liberal Cabinet and start my own all over again, with necessary modifications. I shan't do any such things.

FRANCES. No one knows about you and poor Amy?

TREBELL. Half a dozen friends. Shall I offer to give evidence at the inquest this morning?

FRANCES. [_With a little shiver._] They'll say bad enough things about her without your blackening her good name.

_Without warning, his anger and anguish break out again._

TREBELL. All she had ... all there is left of her! She was a nothingness ... silly ... vain. And I gave her this power over me!

_He is beaten, exhausted. Now she goes to him, motherlike._

FRANCES. My dear, listen to me for a little. Consider that as a sorrow and put it behind you. And think now ... whatever love there may be between us has neither hatred nor jealousy in it, has it, Henry? Since I'm not a mistress or a friend but just the likest fellow-creature to you ... perhaps.

TREBELL. [_Putting out his hand for hers._] Yes, my sister. What I've wanted to feel for vague humanity has been what I should have felt for you ... if you'd ever made a single demand on me.

_She puts her arms round him; able to speak._

FRANCES. Let's go away somewhere ... I'll make demands. I need refreshing as much as you. My joy of life has been withered in me ... oh, for a long time now. We must kiss the earth again ... take interest in common things, common people. There's so much of the world we don't know. There's air to breathe everywhere. Think of the flowers in a Tyrol valley in the early spring. One can walk for days, not hurrying, as soon as the passes are open. And the people are kind. There's Italy ... there's Russia full of simple folk. When we've learned to be friends with them we shall both feel so much better.