You Never Can Tell Part 15

You dare curse my mother!

CRAMPTON. Stop; or you'll be sorry afterwards. I'm your father.

GLORIA. How I hate the name! How I love the name of mother! You had better go.

CRAMPTON. I--I'm choking. You want to kill me. Some--I-- (His voice stifles: he is almost in a fit.)

GLORIA (going up to the bal.u.s.trade with cool, quick resourcefulness, and calling over to the beach). Mr. Valentine!

VALENTINE (answering from below). Yes.

GLORIA. Come here a moment, please. Mr. Crampton wants you. (She returns to the table and pours out a gla.s.s of water.)

CRAMPTON (recovering his speech). No: let me alone. I don't want him.

I'm all right, I tell you. I need neither his help nor yours. (He rises and pulls himself together.) As you say, I had better go. (He puts on his hat.) Is that your last word?

GLORIA. I hope so. (He looks stubbornly at her for a moment; nods grimly, as if he agreed to that; and goes into the hotel. She looks at him with equal steadiness until he disappears, when she makes a gesture of relief, and turns to speak to Valentine, who comes running up the steps.)

VALENTINE (panting). What's the matter? (Looking round.) Where's Crampton?

GLORIA. Gone. (Valentine's face lights up with sudden joy, dread, and mischief. He has just realized that he is alone with Gloria. She continues indifferently) I thought he was ill; but he recovered himself.

He wouldn't wait for you. I am sorry. (She goes for her book and parasol.)

VALENTINE. So much the better. He gets on my nerves after a while.

(Pretending to forget himself.) How could that man have so beautiful a daughter!

GLORIA (taken aback for a moment; then answering him with polite but intentional contempt). That seems to be an attempt at what is called a pretty speech. Let me say at once, Mr. Valentine, that pretty speeches make very sickly conversation. Pray let us be friends, if we are to be friends, in a sensible and wholesome way. I have no intention of getting married; and unless you are content to accept that state of things, we had much better not cultivate each other's acquaintance.

VALENTINE (cautiously). I see. May I ask just this one question? Is your objection an objection to marriage as an inst.i.tution, or merely an objection to marrying me personally?

GLORIA. I do not know you well enough, Mr. Valentine, to have any opinion on the subject of your personal merits. (She turns away from him with infinite indifference, and sits down with her book on the garden seat.) I do not think the conditions of marriage at present are such as any self-respecting woman can accept.

VALENTINE (instantly changing his tone for one of cordial sincerity, as if he frankly accepted her terms and was delighted and rea.s.sured by her principles). Oh, then that's a point of sympathy between us already. I quite agree with you: the conditions are most unfair. (He takes off his hat and throws it gaily on the iron table.) No: what I want is to get rid of all that nonsense. (He sits down beside her, so naturally that she does not think of objecting, and proceeds, with enthusiasm) Don't you think it a horrible thing that a man and a woman can hardly know one another without being supposed to have designs of that kind? As if there were no other interests--no other subjects of conversation--as if women were capable of nothing better!

GLORIA (interested). Ah, now you are beginning to talk humanly and sensibly, Mr. Valentine.

VALENTINE (with a gleam in his eye at the success of his hunter's guile). Of course!--two intelligent people like us. Isn't it pleasant, in this stupid, convention-ridden world, to meet with someone on the same plane--someone with an unprejudiced, enlightened mind?

GLORIA (earnestly). I hope to meet many such people in England.

VALENTINE (dubiously). Hm! There are a good many people here-- nearly forty millions. They're not all consumptive members of the highly educated cla.s.ses like the people in Madeira.

GLORIA (now full of her subject). Oh, everybody is stupid and prejudiced in Madeira--weak, sentimental creatures! I hate weakness; and I hate sentiment.

VALENTINE. That's what makes you so inspiring.

GLORIA (with a slight laugh). Am I inspiring?

VALENTINE Yes. Strength's infectious.

GLORIA. Weakness is, I know.

VALENTINE (with conviction). Y o u're strong. Do you know that you changed the world for me this morning? I was in the dumps, thinking of my unpaid rent, frightened about the future. When you came in, I was dazzled. (Her brow clouds a little. He goes on quickly.) That was silly, of course; but really and truly something happened to me. Explain it how you will, my blood got-- (he hesitates, trying to think of a sufficiently unimpa.s.sioned word) --oxygenated: my muscles braced; my mind cleared; my courage rose. That's odd, isn't it? considering that I am not at all a sentimental man.

GLORIA (uneasily, rising). Let us go back to the beach.

VALENTINE (darkly--looking up at her). What! you feel it, too?

GLORIA. Feel what?

VALENTINE. Dread.

GLORIA. Dread!

VALENTINE. As if something were going to happen. It came over me suddenly just before you proposed that we should run away to the others.

GLORIA (amazed). That's strange--very strange! I had the same presentiment.

VALENTINE. How extraordinary! (Rising.) Well: shall we run away?

GLORIA. Run away! Oh, no: that would be childish. (She sits down again. He resumes his seat beside her, and watches her with a gravely sympathetic air. She is thoughtful and a little troubled as she adds) I wonder what is the scientific explanation of those fancies that cross us occasionally!

VALENTINE. Ah, I wonder! It's a curiously helpless sensation: isn't it?

GLORIA (rebelling against the word). Helpless?

VALENTINE. Yes. As if Nature, after allowing us to belong to ourselves and do what we judged right and reasonable for all these years, were suddenly lifting her great hand to take us--her two little children--by the scruff's of our little necks, and use us, in spite of ourselves, for her own purposes, in her own way.

GLORIA. Isn't that rather fanciful?

VALENTINE (with a new and startling transition to a tone of utter recklessness). I don't know. I don't care. (Bursting out reproachfully.) Oh, Miss Clandon, Miss Clandon: how could you?

GLORIA. What have I done?

VALENTINE. Thrown this enchantment on me. I'm honestly trying to be sensible--scientific--everything that you wish me to be. But--but-- oh, don't you see what you have set to work in my imagination?

GLORIA (with indignant, scornful sternness). I hope you are not going to be so foolish--so vulgar--as to say love.

VALENTINE (with ironical haste to disclaim such a weakness). No, no, no.

Not love: we know better than that. Let's call it chemistry. You can't deny that there is such a thing as chemical action, chemical affinity, chemical combination--the most irresistible of all natural forces. Well, you're attracting me irresistibly--chemically.

GLORIA (contemptuously). Nonsense!

VALENTINE. Of course it's nonsense, you stupid girl. (Gloria recoils in outraged surprise.) Yes, stupid girl: t h a t's a scientific fact, anyhow. You're a prig--a feminine prig: that's what you are. (Rising.) Now I suppose you've done with me for ever. (He goes to the iron table and takes up his hat.)

GLORIA (with elaborate calm, sitting up like a High-school-mistress posing to be photographed). That shows how very little you understand my real character. I am not in the least offended. (He pauses and puts his hat down again.) I am always willing to be told of my own defects, Mr.

Valentine, by my friends, even when they are as absurdly mistaken about me as you are. I have many faults--very serious faults--of character and temper; but if there is one thing that I am not, it is what you call a prig. (She closes her lips trimly and looks steadily and challengingly at him as she sits more collectedly than ever.)

VALENTINE (returning to the end of the garden seat to confront her more emphatically). Oh, yes, you are. My reason tells me so: my knowledge tells me so: my experience tells me so.