FullReads

TARLETON.I think my idea of bringing up a young girl has been rather a success. Dont you listen to this, Patsy: it might make you conceited. Shes never been treated like a child. I always said the same thing to her mother. Let her read what she likes. Let her do what she likes. Let her go where she likes. Eh, Patsy?

HYPATIA. Oh yes, if there had only been anything for me to do, any place for me to go, anything I wanted to read.

TARLETON.There, you see! Shes not satisfied. Restless. Wants things to happen. Wants adventures to drop out of the sky.

HYPATIA. [gathering up her work] If youre going to talk about me and my education, I’m off.

TARLETON.Well, well, off with you. [To Lord Summerhays] Shes active, like me. She actually wanted me to put her into the shop.

HYPATIA. Well, they tell me that the girls there have adventures sometimes. [She goes out through the inner door]

TARLETON.She had me there, though she doesnt know it, poor innocent lamb! Public scandal exaggerates enormously, of course; but moralize as you will, superabundant vitality is a physical fact that cant be talked away. [He sits down between the writing table and the sideboard]. Difficult question this, of bringing up children. Between ourselves, it has beaten me. I never was so surprised in my life as when I came to know Johnny as a man of business and found out what he was really like. How did you manage with your sons?

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Well, I really hadnt time to be a father: thats the plain truth of the matter. Their poor dear mother did the usual thing while they were with us. Then of course, Harrow, Cambridge, the usual routine of their class. I saw very little of them, and thought very little about them: how could I? with a whole province on my hands. They and I are–acquaintances. Not perhaps, quite ordinary acquaintances: theres a sort of–er–I should almost call it a sort of remorse about the way we shake hands (when we do shake hands) which means, I suppose, that we’re sorry we dont care more for one another; and I’m afraid we dont meet oftener than we can help. We put each other too much out of countenance. It’s really a very difficult relation. To my mind not altogether a natural one.

TARLETON.[impressed, as usual] Thats an idea, certainly. I dont think anybody has ever written about that.

LORD SUMMERHAYS. Bentley is the only one who was really my son in any serious sense. He was completely spoilt. When he was sent to a preparatory school he simply yelled until he was sent home. Harrow was out of the question; but we managed to tutor him into Cambridge. No use: he was sent down. By that time my work was over; and I saw a good deal of him. But I could do nothing with him–except look on. I should have thought your case was quite different. You keep up the middle-class tradition: the day school and the business training instead of the university. I believe in the day school part of it. At all events, you know your own children.

TARLETON.Do you? I’m not so sure of it. Fact is, my dear Summerhays, once childhood is over, once the little animal has got past the stage at which it acquires what you might call a sense of decency, it’s all up with the relation between parent and child. You cant get over the fearful shyness of it.