BENTLEY. "Romance of Business" indeed! The real romance of Tarleton's business is the story that you understand anything about it. You never could explain any mortal thing about it to me when Iasked you. "See what was done the last time": that was the beginning and the end of your wisdom. Youre nothing but a turnspit.
JOHNNY. A what!
BENTLEY. A turnspit. If your father hadnt made a roasting jack for you to turn, youd be earning twenty-four shillings a week behind a counter.
JOHNNY. If you dont take that back and apologize for your bad manners, I'll give you as good a hiding as ever--BENTLEY. Help! Johnny's beating me! Oh! Murder! [He throws himself on the ground, uttering piercing yells].
JOHNNY. Dont be a fool. Stop that noise, will you. I'm not going to touch you. Sh--sh--Hypatia rushes in through the inner door, followed by Mrs Tarleton, and throws herself on her knees by Bentley. Mrs Tarleton, whose knees are stiffer, bends over him and tries to lift him. Mrs Tarleton is a shrewd and motherly old lady who has been pretty in her time, and is still very pleasant and likeable and unaffected. Hypatia is a typical English girl of a sort never called typical: that is, she has an opaque white skin, black hair, large dark eyes with black brows and lashes, curved lips, swift glances and movements that flash out of a waiting stillness, boundless energy and audacity held in leash.
HYPATIA. [pouncing on Bentley with no very gentle hand] Bentley:
whats the matter? Dont cry like that: whats the use? Whats happened?
MRS TARLETON. Are you ill, child? [They get him up. There, there, pet! It's all right: dont cry [they put him into a chair]: there!
there! there! Johnny will go for the doctor; and he'll give you something nice to make it well.
HYPATIA. What has happened, Johnny?
MRS TARLETON. Was it a wasp?
BENTLEY. [impatiently] Wasp be dashed!
MRS TARLETON. Oh Bunny! that was a naughty word.
BENTLEY. Yes, I know: I beg your pardon. [He rises, and extricates himself from them] Thats all right. Johnny frightened me. You know how easy it is to hurt me; and I'm too small to defend myself against Johnny.
MRS TARLETON. Johnny: how often have I told you that you must not bully the little ones. I thought youd outgrown all that.
HYPATIA. [angrily] I do declare, mamma, that Johnny's brutality makes it impossible to live in the house with him.
JOHNNY. [deeply hurt] It's twenty-seven years, mother, since you had that row with me for licking Robert and giving Hypatia a black eye because she bit me. I promised you then that I'd never raise my hand to one of them again; and Ive never broken my word. And now because this young whelp begins to cry out before he's hurt, you treat me as if I were a brute and a savage.
MRS TARLETON. No dear, not a savage; but you know you must not call our visitor naughty names.
BENTLEY. Oh, let him alone--
JOHNNY. [fiercely] Dont you interfere between my mother and me:
d'y' hear?
HYPATIA. Johnny's lost his temper, mother. We'd better go. Come, Bentley.
MRS TARLETON. Yes: that will be best. [To Bentley] Johnny doesnt mean any harm, dear: he'll be himself presently. Come.
The two ladies go out through the inner door with Bentley, who turns at the door to grin at Johnny as he goes out.
Johnny, left alone, clenches his fists and grinds his teeth, but can find no relief in that way for his rage. After choking and stamping for a moment, he makes for the vestibule door. It opens before he reaches it; and Lord Summerhays comes in. Johnny glares at him, speechless. Lord Summerhays takes in the situation, and quickly takes the punchbowl from the sideboard and offers it to Johnny.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Smash it. Dont hesitate: it's an ugly thing.
Smash it: hard. [Johnny, with a stifled yell, dashes it in pieces, and then sits down and mops his brow]. Feel better now? [Johnny nods]. I know only one person alive who could drive me to the point of having either to break china or commit murder; and that person is my son Bentley. Was it he? [Johnny nods again, not yet able to speak]. As the car stopped I heard a yell which is only too familiar to me. It generally means that some infuriated person is trying to thrash Bentley. Nobody has ever succeeded, though almost everybody has tried. [He seats himself comfortably close to the writing table, and sets to work to collect the fragments of the punchbowl in the wastepaper basket whilst Johnny, with diminishing difficulty, collects himself]. Bentley is a problem which I confess I have never been able to solve. He was born to be a great success at the age of fifty.
Most Englishmen of his class seem to be born to be great successes at the age of twenty-four at most. The domestic problem for me is how to endure Bentley until he is fifty. The problem for the nation is how to get itself governed by men whose growth is arrested when they are little more than college lads. Bentley doesnt really mean to be offensive. You can always make him cry by telling him you dont like him. Only, he cries so loud that the experiment should be made in the open air: in the middle of Salisbury Plain if possible. He has a hard and penetrating intellect and a remarkable power of looking facts in the face; but unfortunately, being very young, he has no idea of how very little of that sort of thing most of us can stand. On the other hand, he is frightfully sensitive and even affectionate; so that he probably gets as much as he gives in the way of hurt feelings.
Youll excuse me rambling on like this about my son.
JOHNNY. [who has pulled himself together] You did it on purpose.
I wasnt quite myself: I needed a moment to pull round: thank you.
LORD SUMMERHAYS. Not at all. Is your father at home?
JOHNNY. No: he's opening one of his free libraries. Thats another nice little penny gone. He's mad on reading. He promised another free library last week. It's ruinous. Itll hit you as well as me when Bunny marries Hypatia. When all Hypatia's money is thrown away on libraries, where will Bunny come in? Cant you stop him?
LORD SUMMERHAYS. I'm afraid not. Hes a perfect whirlwind.
