Waste Part 35

FRANCES. Oh ... don't ... don't!

_He falls from his seeming callousness to the very blankness of despair._

TREBELL. No, we'll leave that ... and the rest ... and everything.

_Her agony pa.s.ses._

FRANCES. What do you mean to do?

TREBELL. There's to be no public scandal.

FRANCES. Why has Lord Horsham thrown you over then ... or hasn't that anything to do with it?

TREBELL. It has to do with it.

FRANCES. [_Lifting her voice; some tone returning to it._] Unconsciously ...

I've known for years that this sort of thing might happen to you.

TREBELL. Why?

FRANCES. Power over men and women and contempt for them! Do you think they don't take their revenge sooner or later?

TREBELL. Much good may it do them!

FRANCES. Human nature turns against you ... by instinct ... in self-defence.

TREBELL. And my own human-nature!

FRANCES. [_Shocked into great pity, by his half articulate pain._] Yes ...

you must have loved her, Henry ... in some odd way. I'm sorry for you both.

TREBELL. I'm hating her now ... as a man can only hate his own silliest vices.

FRANCES. [_Flashing into defence._] That's wrong of you. If you thought of her only as a pretty little fool.... Bearing your child ... all her womanly life belonged to you ... and for that time there was no other sort of life in her. So she became what you thought her.

TREBELL. That's not true.

FRANCES. It's true enough ... it's true of men towards women. You can't think of them through generations as one thing and then suddenly find them another.

TREBELL. [_Hammering at his fixed idea._] She should have brought that child into the world.

FRANCES. You didn't love her enough!

TREBELL. I didn't love her at all.

FRANCES. Then why should she value your gift?

TREBELL. For its own sake.

FRANCES. [_Turning away._] It's hopeless ... you don't understand.

TREBELL. [_Helpless; almost like a deserted child._] I've been trying to ...

all through the night.

FRANCES. [_Turning back enlightened a little._] That's more the trouble then than the Cabinet question?

_He shakes himself to his feet and begins to pace the room; his keenness coming back to him, his brow knitting again with the delight of thought._

TREBELL. Oh ... as to me against the world ... I'm fortified with comic courage. [_Then turning on her like any examining professor._] Now which do you believe ... that Man is the reformer, or that the Time brings forth such men as it needs and lobster-like can grow another claw?

FRANCES. [_Watching this new mood carefully._] I believe that you'll be missed from Lord Horsham's Cabinet.

TREBELL. The hand-made statesman and his hand-made measure! They were out of place in that pretty Tory garden. Those men are the natural growth of the time. Am I?

FRANCES. Just as much. And wasn't your bill going to be such a good piece of work? That can't be thrown away ... wasted.

TREBELL. Can one impose a clever idea upon men and women? I wonder.

FRANCES. That rather begs the question of your very existence, doesn't it?

_He comes to a standstill._

TREBELL. I know.

_His voice shows her that meaning in her words and beyond it a threat.

She goes to him, suddenly shaking with fear._

FRANCES. Henry, I didn't mean that.

TREBELL. You think I've a mind to put an end to that same?

FRANCES. [_Belittling her fright._] No ... for how unreasonable....

TREBELL. In view of my promising past. I've stood for success, f.a.n.n.y; I still stand for success. I could still do more outside the Cabinet than the rest of them, inside, will do. But suddenly I've a feeling the work would be barren. [_His eyes shift beyond her; beyond the room._] What is it in your thoughts and actions which makes them bear fruit? Something that the roughest peasant may have in common with the best of us intellectual men ...

something that a dog might have. It isn't successful cleverness.

_She stands ... his trouble beyond her reach._

FRANCES. Come now ... you've done very well with your life.

TREBELL. Do you know how empty I feel of all virtue at this moment?

_He leaves her. She must bring him back to the plane on which she can help him._

FRANCES. We must think what's best to be done ... now ... and for the future.

TREBELL. Why, I could go on earning useless money at the Bar ... think how nice that would be. I could blackmail the next judgeship out of Horsham. I think I could even smash his Disestablishment Bill ... and perhaps get into the next Liberal Cabinet and start my own all over again, with necessary modifications. I shan't do any such things.