Masters of the Theatre

by Delphi Classics

  How old is Roebuck? The question is important on the threshold of a drama of ideas; for under such circumstances everything depends on whether his adolescence belonged to the sixties or to the eighties. He was born, as a matter of fact, in 1839, and was a Unitarian and Free Trader from his boyhood, and an Evolutionist from the publication of the Origin of Species. Consequently he has always classed himself as an advanced thinker and fearlessly outspoken reformer.

  Sitting at his writing table, he has on his right the windows giving on Portland Place. Through these, as through a proscenium, the curious spectator may contemplate his profile as well as the blinds will permit. On his left is the inner wall, with a stately bookcase, and the door not quite in the middle, but somewhat further from him. Against the wall opposite him are two busts on pillars: one, to his left, of John Bright; the other, to his right, of Mr Herbert Spencer. Between them hang an engraved portrait of Richard Cobden; enlarged photographs of Martineau, Huxley, and George Eliot; autotypes of allegories by Mr G.F. Watts (for Roebuck believed in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them), and an impression of Dupont’s engraving of Delaroche’s Beaux Artes hemicycle, representing the great men of all ages. On the wall behind him, above the mantelshelf, is a family portrait of impenetrable obscurity.

  A chair stands near the writing table for the convenience of business visitors. Two other chairs are against the wall between the busts.

  A parlormaid enters with a visitor’s card. Roebuck takes it, and nods, pleased. Evidently a welcome caller.

  RAMSDEN. Show him up.

  The parlormaid goes out and returns with the visitor.

  THE MAID. Mr Robinson.

  Mr Robinson is really an uncommonly nice looking young fellow. He must, one thinks, be the jeune premier; for it is not in reason to suppose that a second such attractive male figure should appear in one story. The slim shapely frame, the elegant suit of new mourning, the small head and regular features, the pretty little moustache, the frank clear eyes, the wholesome bloom and the youthful complexion, the well brushed glossy hair, not curly, but of fine texture and good dark color, the arch of good nature in the eyebrows, the erect forehead and neatly pointed chin, all announce the man who will love and suffer later on. And that he will not do so without sympathy is guaranteed by an engaging sincerity and eager modest serviceableness which stamp him as a man of amiable nature. The moment he appears, Ramsden’s face expands into fatherly liking and welcome, an expression which drops into one of decorous grief as the young man approaches him with sorrow in his face as well as in his black clothes. Ramsden seems to know the nature of the bereavement. As the visitor advances silently to the writing table, the old man rises and shakes his hand across it without a word: a long, affectionate shake which tells the story of a recent sorrow common to both.

  RAMSDEN. [concluding the handshake and cheering up] Well, well, Octavius, it’s the common lot. We must all face it someday. Sit down.

  Octavius takes the visitor’s chair. Ramsden replaces himself in his own.

  OCTAVIUS. Yes: we must face it, Mr Ramsden. But I owed him a great deal. He did everything for me that my father could have done if he had lived.

  RAMSDEN. He had no son of his own, you see.

  OCTAVIUS. But he had daughters; and yet he was as good to my sister as to me. And his death was so sudden! I always intended to thank him — to let him know that I had not taken all his care of me as a matter of course, as any boy takes his father’s care. But I waited for an opportunity and now he is dead — dropped without a moment’s warning. He will never know what I felt. [He takes out his handkerchief and cries unaffectedly].

  RAMSDEN. How do we know that, Octavius? He may know it: we cannot tell. Come! Don’t grieve. [Octavius masters himself and puts up his handkerchief]. That’s right. Now let me tell you something to console you. The last time I saw him — it was in this very room — he said to me: “Tavy is a generous lad and the soul of honor; and when I see how little consideration other men get from their sons, I realize how much better than a son he’s been to me.” There! Doesn’t that do you good?

  OCTAVIUS. Mr Ramsden: he used to say to me that he had met only one man in the world who was the soul of honor, and that was Roebuck Ramsden.

  RAMSDEN. Oh, that was his partiality: we were very old friends, you know. But there was something else he used to say about you. I wonder whether I ought to tell you or not!

  OCTAVIUS. You know best.

  RAMSDEN. It was something about his daughter.

  OCTAVIUS. [eagerly] About Ann! Oh, do tell me that, Mr Ramsden.

  RAMSDEN. Well, he said he was glad, after all, you were not his son, because he thought that someday Annie and you — [Octavius blushes vividly]. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have told you. But he was in earnest.

  OCTAVIUS. Oh, if only I thought I had a chance! You know, Mr Ramsden, I don’t care about money or about what people call position; and I can’t bring myself to take an interest in the business of struggling for them. Well, Ann has a most exquisite nature; but she is so accustomed to be in the thick of that sort of thing that she thinks a man’s character incomplete if he is not ambitious. She knows that if she married me she would have to reason herself out of being ashamed of me for not being a big success of some kind.

  RAMSDEN. [Getting up and planting himself with his back to the fireplace] Nonsense, my boy, nonsense! You’re too modest. What does she know about the real value of men at her age? [More seriously] Besides, she’s a wonderfully dutiful girl. Her father’s wish would be sacred to her. Do you know that since she grew up to years of discretion, I don’t believe she has ever once given her own wish as a reason for doing anything or not doing it. It’s always “Father wishes me to,” or “Mother wouldn’t like it.” It’s really almost a fault in her. I have often told her she must learn to think for herself.

  OCTAVIUS. [shaking his head] I couldn’t ask her to marry me because her father wished it, Mr Ramsden.

  RAMSDEN. Well, perhaps not. No: of course not. I see that. No: you certainly couldn’t. But when you win her on your own merits, it will be a great happiness to her to fulfil her father’s desire as well as her own. Eh? Come! you’ll ask her, won’t you?

  OCTAVIUS. [with sad gaiety] At all events I promise you I shall never ask anyone else.

  RAMSDEN. Oh, you shan’t need to. She’ll accept you, my boy — although [here he suddenly becomes very serious indeed] you have one great drawback.

  OCTAVIUS. [anxiously] What drawback is that, Mr Ramsden? I should rather say which of my many drawbacks?

  RAMSDEN. I’ll tell you, Octavius. [He takes from the table a book bound in red cloth]. I have in my hand a copy of the most infamous, the most scandalous, the most mischievous, the most blackguardly book that ever escaped burning at the hands of the common hangman. I have not read it: I would not soil my mind with such filth; but I have read what the papers say of it. The title is quite enough for me. [He reads it]. The Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket Companion by John Tanner, M.I.R.C., Member of the Idle Rich Class.

  OCTAVIUS. [smiling] But Jack —

  RAMSDEN. [testily] For goodness’ sake, don’t call him Jack under my roof [he throws the book violently down on the table, Then, somewhat relieved, he comes past the table to Octavius, and addresses him at close quarters with impressive gravity]. Now, Octavius, I know that my dead friend was right when he said you were a generous lad. I know that this man was your schoolfellow, and that you feel bound to stand by him because there was a boyish friendship between you. But I ask you to consider the altered circumstances. You were treated as a son in my friend’s house. You lived there; and your friends could not be turned from the door. This Tanner was in and out there on your account almost from his childhood. He addresses Annie by her Christian name as freely as you do. Well, while her father was alive, that was her father’s business, not mine. This man Tanner was only a boy to him: his opinions were something to be laughed at, like a man�
�s hat on a child’s head. But now Tanner is a grown man and Annie a grown woman. And her father is gone. We don’t as yet know the exact terms of his will; but he often talked it over with me; and I have no more doubt than I have that you’re sitting there that the will appoints me Annie’s trustee and guardian. [Forcibly] Now I tell you, once for all, I can’t and I won’t have Annie placed in such a position that she must, out of regard for you, suffer the intimacy of this fellow Tanner. It’s not fair: it’s not right: it’s not kind. What are you going to do about it?

  OCTAVIUS. But Ann herself has told Jack that whatever his opinions are, he will always be welcome because he knew her dear father.

  RAMSDEN. [out of patience] That girl’s mad about her duty to her parents. [He starts off like a goaded ox in the direction of John Bright, in whose expression there is no sympathy for him. As he speaks, he fumes down to Herbert Spencer, who receives him still more coldly] Excuse me, Octavius; but there are limits to social toleration. You know that I am not a bigoted or prejudiced man. You know that I am plain Roebuck Ramsden when other men who have done less have got handles to their names, because I have stood for equality and liberty of conscience while they were truckling to the Church and to the aristocracy. Whitefield and I lost chance after chance through our advanced opinions. But I draw the line at Anarchism and Free Love and that sort of thing. If I am to be Annie’s guardian, she will have to learn that she has a duty to me. I won’t have it: I will not have it. She must forbid John Tanner the house; and so must you.

  The parlormaid returns.

  OCTAVIUS. But —

  RAMSDEN. [calling his attention to the servant] Ssh! Well?

  THE MAID. Mr Tanner wishes to see you, sir.

  RAMSDEN. Mr Tanner!

  OCTAVIUS. Jack!

  RAMSDEN. How dare Mr Tanner call on me! Say I cannot see him.

  OCTAVIUS. [hurt] I am sorry you are turning my friend from your door like that.

  THE MAID. [calmly] He’s not at the door, sir. He’s upstairs in the drawingroom with Miss Ramsden. He came with Mrs Whitefield and Miss Ann and Miss Robinson, sir.

  Ramsden’s feelings are beyond words.

  OCTAVIUS. [grinning] That’s very like Jack, Mr Ramsden. You must see him, even if it’s only to turn him out.

  RAMSDEN. [hammering out his words with suppressed fury] Go upstairs and ask Mr Tanner to be good enough to step down here. [The parlormaid goes out; and Ramsden returns to the fireplace, as to a fortified position]. I must say that of all the confounded pieces of impertinence — well, if these are Anarchist manners I hope you like them. And Annie with him! Annie! A — [he chokes].

  OCTAVIUS. Yes: that’s what surprises me. He’s so desperately afraid of Ann. There must be something the matter.

  Mr John Tanner suddenly opens the door and enters. He is too young to be described simply as a big man with a beard. But it is already plain that middle life will find him in that category. He has still some of the slimness of youth; but youthfulness is not the effect he aims at: his frock coat would befit a prime minister; and a certain high chested carriage of the shoulders, a lofty pose of the head, and the Olympian majesty with which a mane, or rather a huge wisp, of hazel colored hair is thrown back from an imposing brow, suggest Jupiter rather than Apollo. He is prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark the snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the thirty-secondth of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad. He is carefully dressed, not from the vanity that cannot resist finery, but from a sense of the importance of everything he does which leads him to make as much of paying a call as other men do of getting married or laying a foundation stone. A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a megalomaniac, who would be lost without a sense of humor.

  Just at present the sense of humor is in abeyance. To say that he is excited is nothing: all his moods are phases of excitement. He is now in the panic-stricken phase; and he walks straight up to Ramsden as if with the fixed intention of shooting him on his own hearthrug. But what he pulls from his breast pocket is not a pistol, but a foolscap document which he thrusts under the indignant nose of Ramsden as he exclaims —

  TANNER. Ramsden: do you know what that is?

  RAMSDEN. [loftily] No, Sir.

  TANNER. It’s a copy of Whitefield’s will. Ann got it this morning.

  RAMSDEN. When you say Ann, you mean, I presume, Miss Whitefield.

  TANNER. I mean our Ann, your Ann, Tavy’s Ann, and now, Heaven help me, my Ann!

  OCTAVIUS. [rising, very pale] What do you mean?

  TANNER. Mean! [He holds up the will]. Do you know who is appointed Ann’s guardian by this will?

  RAMSDEN. [coolly] I believe I am.

  TANNER. You! You and I, man. I! I!! I!!! Both of us! [He flings the will down on the writing table].

  RAMSDEN. You! Impossible.

  TANNER. It’s only too hideously true. [He throws himself into Octavius’s chair]. Ramsden: get me out of it somehow. You don’t know Ann as well as I do. She’ll commit every crime a respectable woman can; and she’ll justify every one of them by saying that it was the wish of her guardians. She’ll put everything on us; and we shall have no more control over her than a couple of mice over a cat.

  OCTAVIUS. Jack: I wish you wouldn’t talk like that about Ann.

  TANNER. This chap’s in love with her: that’s another complication. Well, she’ll either jilt him and say I didn’t approve of him, or marry him and say you ordered her to. I tell you, this is the most staggering blow that has ever fallen on a man of my age and temperament.

  RAMSDEN. Let me see that will, sir. [He goes to the writing table and picks it up]. I cannot believe that my old friend Whitefield would have shown such a want of confidence in me as to associate me with — [His countenance falls as he reads].

  TANNER. It’s all my own doing: that’s the horrible irony of it. He told me one day that you were to be Ann’s guardian; and like a fool I began arguing with him about the folly of leaving a young woman under the control of an old man with obsolete ideas.

  RAMSDEN. [stupended] My ideas obsolete!!!!!

  TANNER. Totally. I had just finished an essay called Down with Government by the Greyhaired; and I was full of arguments and illustrations. I said the proper thing was to combine the experience of an old hand with the vitality of a young one. Hang me if he didn’t take me at my word and alter his will — it’s dated only a fortnight after that conversation — appointing me as joint guardian with you!

  RAMSDEN. [pale and determined] I shall refuse to act.

  TANNER. What’s the good of that? I’ve been refusing all the way from Richmond; but Ann keeps on saying that of course she’s only an orphan; and that she can’t expect the people who were glad to come to the house in her father’s time to trouble much about her now. That’s the latest game. An orphan! It’s like hearing an ironclad talk about being at the mercy of the winds and waves.

  OCTAVIUS. This is not fair, Jack. She is an orphan. And you ought to stand by her.

  TANNER. Stand by her! What danger is she in? She has the law on her side; she has popular sentiment on her side; she has plenty of money and no conscience. All she wants with me is to load up all her moral responsibilities on me, and do as she likes at the expense of my character. I can’t control her; and she can compromise me as much as she likes. I might as well be her husband.

  RAMSDEN. You can refuse to accept the guardianship. I shall certainly refuse to hold it jointly with you.

  TANNER. Yes; and what will she say to that? what does she say to it? Just that her father’s wishes are sacred to her, and that she shall always look up to me as her guardian whether I care to face the responsibility or not. Refuse! You might as well refuse to accept the embraces of a boa constrictor when once it gets round your neck.

  OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is not kind to me, Jack.

  TANNER. [rising and going to Octavius to console him, but still lamenting] If he wanted a young guardian, why didn’t he appoint Tavy?


  RAMSDEN. Ah! why indeed?

  OCTAVIUS. I will tell you. He sounded me about it; but I refused the trust because I loved her. I had no right to let myself be forced on her as a guardian by her father. He spoke to her about it; and she said I was right. You know I love her, Mr Ramsden; and Jack knows it too. If Jack loved a woman, I would not compare her to a boa constrictor in his presence, however much I might dislike her [he sits down between the busts and turns his face to the wall].

  RAMSDEN. I do not believe that Whitefield was in his right senses when he made that will. You have admitted that he made it under your influence.

  TANNER. You ought to be pretty well obliged to me for my influence. He leaves you two thousand five hundred for your trouble. He leaves Tavy a dowry for his sister and five thousand for himself.

  OCTAVIUS. [his tears flowing afresh] Oh, I can’t take it. He was too good to us.

  TANNER. You won’t get it, my boy, if Ramsden upsets the will.

  RAMSDEN. Ha! I see. You have got me in a cleft stick.

  TANNER. He leaves me nothing but the charge of Ann’s morals, on the ground that I have already more money than is good for me. That shows that he had his wits about him, doesn’t it?

  RAMSDEN. [grimly] I admit that.

  OCTAVIUS. [rising and coming from his refuge by the wall] Mr Ramsden: I think you are prejudiced against Jack. He is a man of honor, and incapable of abusing —