The Title by Arnold Bennett (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

seem quite sure. Are we still in the realm of fact, or are we slipping over the frontier?

TRANTO. The article was perfectly all right. It rattled off from beginning to end like a machine-gun, and must have caused enormous casualties. Only I thought Auntie Joe might be one of the casualties. I thought it might put her out of action as a hostess for a week or so. You see, for me to publish such an onslaught on new titles in the afternoon, and then attempt to dine with the latest countess the same night--and she my own aunt--well, it might be regarded as a bit--thick. So I'm confined to the house--this house as it happens.

HILDEGARDE. But you told John your people would take the article like meat and drink.

TRANTO. What if I did? John can't expect to discover the whole truth about everything at one go. He's found out it's a jolly strange world. That ought to satisfy him for to-day. Besides, he only asked me about my uncles. He said nothing about my uncles' wives. You know what women are--I mean wives.

HILDEGARDE. Oh, I do! Mother is a marvellous specimen.

TRANTO. I haven't told you the worst.

HILDEGARDE. I hope no man ever will.

TRANTO. The worst is this. Auntie Joe actually thinks I'm Sampson Straight.

HILDEGARDE. She doesn't!

TRANTO. She does. She has an infinite capacity for belief. The psychology of the thing is as follows. My governor died a comparatively poor man. A couple of hundred thousand pounds, more or less. Whereas Uncle Joe is worth five millions--and Uncle Joe was going to adopt me, when Auntie Joe butted in and married him. She used to arrange the flowers for his first wife. Then she arranged his flowers. Then she became a flower herself and he had to gather her. Then she had twins, and my chances of inheriting that five millions (he imitates the noise of a slight explosion) short-circuited! Well, I didn't care a volt--not a volt! I've got lots of uncles left who are quite capable of adopting me. But I didn't really want to be adopted at all. To adopt me was only part of Uncle Joe's political game. It was my Echo that he was after adopting. But I'd sooner run my Echo on my own than inherit Uncle Joe's controlling share in twenty-five daily papers, seventy-one weekly papers, six monthly magazines, and three independent advertising agencies. I know I'm a poor man, but I'm quite ready to go on facing the world bravely with my modest capital of a couple of hundred thousand pounds. Only Auntie Joe can't understand that. She's absolutely convinced that I have a terrific grudge against her and her twins, and that in order to gratify that grudge I myself personally write articles against all her most sacred ideals under the pseudonym of Sampson Straight. I've pointed out to her that I'm a newspaper proprietor, and no newspaper proprietor ever could write. No use! She won't listen.

HILDEGARDE. Then she thinks you're a liar.

TRANTO. Oh, not at all. Only a journalist. But you perceive the widening rift in the family lute. (A silence.) Pardon this glimpse into the secret history of the week.

HILDEGARDE (formidably). Mr. Tranto, you and I are sitting on the edge of a volcano.

TRANTO. We are. I like it. Thrilling, and yet so warm and cosy.

HILDEGARDE. I used to like it once. But I don't think I like it any more.

TRANTO. Now please don't let Auntie Joe worry you. She's my cross, not yours.

HILDEGARDE. Yes. But considered as a cross, your Auntie Joe is nothing to my brother John, who quite justly calls his sister's cookery stuff 'tripe.' It was a most ingenious camouflage of yours to have me pretending to be the author of that food economy 'tripe,' so as to cover my writing quite different articles for The Echo and your coming here to see me so often. Most ingenious. Worthy of a newspaper proprietor. But why should I be saddled with 'tripe' that isn't mine?

TRANTO. Why, indeed! Then you think we ought to encourage the volcano with a lighted match--and run?

HILDEGARDE. I'm ready if you are.

TRANTO. Oh! I'm ready. Secrecy was a great stunt at first. Letting out the secret will be an even greater stunt now. It'll make the finest newspaper story since the fearful fall of the last Cabinet. Sampson Straight--equals Miss Hildegarde Culver, the twenty-one year old daughter of the Controller of Accounts! Typist in the Food Department, by day! Journalistic genius by night! The terror of Ministers! Read by all London! Raised the circulation of The Echo two hundred per cent! Phenomenon unique in the annals of Fleet Street! (In a different tone, noticing Hildegarde's face). Crude headlines, I admit, but that's what Uncle Joe has brought us to. We have to compete with Uncle Joe....

HILDEGARDE. Of course I shall have to leave home.

TRANTO. Leave home!

HILDEGARDE. Yes, and live by myself in rooms.

TRANTO. But why?

HILDEGARDE. I couldn't possibly stay here. Think how it would compromise father with the War Cabinet if I did. It might ruin him. And as accounts are everything in modern warfare, it might lose the war. But that's nothing--it's mamma I'm thinking of. Do you forget that Sampson Straight, being a young woman of advanced ideas, has written about everything, everything--yes, and several other subjects besides? For instance, here's the article I was revising when you came in. (Shows the title-page to Tranto.)

TRANTO. Splendid! You're the most courageous creature I ever met.

HILDEGARDE. Possibly. But not courageous enough to offer to kiss mamma when I went to bed on the night that that (indicating the article) had appeared in print under my own name. You don't know mamma.

TRANTO. But dash it! You could eat your mother!

HILDEGARDE. Pardon me. The contrary is the fact. Mamma could eat me.

TRANTO. But you're the illustrious Sampson Straight. There's more intelligence in your little finger than there is in your mother's whole body. See how you write.

HILDEGARDE. Write! I only began to write as a relief from mamma. I escaped secretly into articles like escaping into an underground passage. But as for facing mamma in the open!... Even father scarcely ever does that; and when he does, we hold our breath, and the cook turns teetotal. It wouldn't be the slightest use me trying to explain the situation logically to mamma. She wouldn't understand. She's far too clever to understand anything she doesn't like. Perhaps that's the secret of her power. No, if the truth about Sampson Straight is to come out I must leave home--quietly but firmly leave home. And why not? I can keep myself in splendour on Sampson's earnings. And the break is bound to come sooner or later. I admit I didn't begin very seriously, but reading my own articles has gradually made me serious. I feel I have a cause. A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.

TRANTO. Cause be hanged! Suffer be hanged! High heels be hanged! Champagne--(stops). Miss Culver, if a disclosure means your leaving home I won't agree to any disclosure whatever. I will--not--agree. We'll sit tight on the volcano.

HILDEGARDE. But why won't you agree?

TRANTO (excited). Why won't I agree! Why won't I agree! Because I don't want you to leave home. I know you're a born genius--a marvel, a miracle, a prodigy, an incredible orchid, the most brilliant journalist in London. I'm fully aware of all that. But I do not and will not see you as a literary bachelor living with a cause and holding receptions of serious people in chambers furnished by Roger Fry. I like to think of you at home, here, in this charming atmosphere, amid the delightful vicissitudes of family existence, and--well, I like to think of you as a woman.

HILDEGARDE (calmly and teasingly). Mr. Tranto, we are forgetting one thing.

TRANTO. What's that?

HILDEGARDE. You're an editor, and I'm a contributor whom you've never met.

Enter Mrs. Culver (L).

MRS. CULVER. Mr. Tranto, how are you? (Shaking hands.) I'm delighted to see you. So sorry I didn't warn you we dine half an hour later--thanks to the scandalous way the Government slave-drives my poor husband. Please do excuse me. (She sits).

TRANTO. On the contrary, it's I who should ask to be excused--proposing myself like this at the last moment.

MRS. CULVER. It was very nice of you to think of us. Come and sit down here. (Indicating a place by her side on the sofa.) Now in my poor addled brain I had an idea you were engaged for to-night at your aunt's, Lady Blackfriars'.

TRANTO (sitting). Mrs. Culver, you forget nothing. I was engaged for Auntie Joe's, but she's ill and she's put me off.

MRS. CULVER. Dear me! How very sudden!

TRANTO. Sudden?

MRS. CULVER. I met Lady Blackfriars at tea late this afternoon and it struck me how well she was looking.

TRANTO. Yes, she always looks particularly well just before she's going to be ill. She's very brave, very brave.

MRS. CULVER. D'you mean in having twins? It was more than brave of her; it was beautiful--both boys, too.

HILDEGARDE (innocently). Budgeting for a long war.

MRS. CULVER (affectionately). My dear girl! Come here, darling, you haven't changed. Excuse me, Mr. Tranto.

HILDEGARDE (approaching). I've been so busy. And I thought nobody was coming.

MRS. CULVER. Is your father nobody? (stroking and patting Hildegarde's dress into order). What have you been so busy on?

HILDEGARDE. Article for The Echo. (Tranto, who has been holding the MS., indicates it.)

MRS. CULVER. I do wish you would let me see those cookery articles of yours before they're printed.

TRANTO (putting MS. in his pocket). I'm afraid that's quite against the rules. You see, in Fleet Street--

MRS. CULVER (very pleasantly). As you please. I don't pretend to be intellectual. But I confess I'm just a wee bit disappointed in Hildegarde's cookery articles. I'm a great believer in good cookery. I put it next to the Christian religion--and far in front of mere cleanliness. I've just been trying to read Professor Metchnikoff's wonderful book on 'The Nature of Man.' It only confirms me in my lifelong belief that until the nature of man is completely altered good cooking is the chief thing that women ought to understand. Now I taught Hildegarde some cookery myself. She was not what I should call a brilliant pupil, but she did grasp the great eternal principles. And yet I find her writing (with charm and benevolence) stuff like her last article--'The Everlasting Boiled Potato,' I think she called it. Hildegarde, it was really very naughty of you to say what you said in that article. (Drawing down Hildegarde's head and kissing her.)

TRANTO. Now why, Mrs. Culver? I thought it was so clever.

MRS. CULVER. It may be clever to advocate fried potatoes and chip potatoes and saute potatoes as a change from the everlasting boiled. I daresay it's what you call journalism. But how can you fry potatoes without fat?

TRANTO. Ah! How?

MRS. CULVER. And where are you to obtain fat? I can't obtain fat. I stand in queues for hours because my servants won't--it's the latest form of democracy--but I can't obtain fat. I think the nearest fat is at Stratford-on-Avon.

TRANTO. Stand in queues! Mrs. Culver, you make me feel very guilty, plunging in at a moment's notice and