SARAH and BARBARA come in with their respective young men, CHARLES LOMAX and ADOLPHUS CUSINS. {17}SARAH is slender, bored, and mundane. BARBARA is robuster, jollier, much more energetic. SARAH is fashionably dressed: BARBARA is in Salvation Army uniform. LOMAX, a young man about town, is like many other young men about town. He is afflicted with a frivolous sense of humor which plunges him at the most inopportune moments into paroxysms of imperfectly suppressed laughter. CUSINS is a spectacled student, slight, thin haired, and sweet voiced, with a more complex form of LOMAX’s complaint. His sense of humor is intellectual and subtle, and is complicated by an appalling temper. The life-long struggle of a benevolent temperament and a high conscience against impulses of inhuman ridicule and fierce impatience has set up a chronic strain which has visibly wrecked his constitution. He is a most implacable, determined, tenacious, intolerant person who by mere force of character presents himself as — and indeed actually is — considerate, gentle, explanatory, even mild and apologetic, capable possibly of murder, but not of cruelty or coarseness. By the operation of some instinct which is not merciful enough to blind him with the illusions of love, he is obstinately bent on marrying BARBARA. LOMAX likes SARAH and thinks it will be rather a lark to marry her. Consequently he has not attempted to resist LADY BRITOMART’s arrangements to that end.
All four look as if they had been having a good deal of fun in the drawingroom. The girls enter first, leaving the swains outside. SARAH comes to the settee. BARBARA comes in after her and stops at the door.
BARBARA Are Cholly and Dolly to come in?
LADY BRITOMART [forcibly] Barbara: I will not have Charles called Cholly: the vulgarity of it positively makes me ill.
BARBARA It’s all right, mother. Cholly is quite correct nowadays. Are they to come in?
LADY BRITOMART Yes, if they will behave themselves.
BARBARA [through the door] Come in, Dolly, and behave yourself.
BARBARA comes to her mother’s writing table. CUSINS enters smiling, and wanders towards LADY BRITOMART.
SARAH [calling] Come in, Cholly. [LOMAX enters, controlling his features very imperfectly, and places himself vaguely between SARAH and BARBARA.]
LADY BRITOMART [peremptorily] Sit down, all of you. [They sit. CUSINS crosses to the window and seats himself there. LOMAX takes a chair. BARBARA sits at the writing table and SARAH on the settee. ] I dont in the least know what you are laughing at, Adolphus. I am surprised at you, though I expected nothing better from Charles Lomax.
CUSINS [in a remarkably gentle voice] Barbara has been trying to teach me the West Ham Salvation March.
LADY BRITOMART I see nothing to laugh at in that; nor should you if you are really converted.
CUSINS [sweetly] You were not present. It was really funny, I believe.
LOMAX Ripping.
LADY BRITOMART Be quiet, Charles. Now listen to me, children. Your father is coming here this evening. [General stupefaction. ]
LOMAX [remonstrating] Oh I say!
LADY BRITOMART You are not called on to say anything, Charles.
SARAH Are you serious, mother?
LADY BRITOMART Of course I am serious. It is on your account, Sarah, and also on Charles’s. [Silence. CHARLES looks painfully unworthy.] I hope you are not going to object, Barbara.
BARBARA I! why should I? My father has a soul to be saved like anybody else. Hes quite welcome as far as I am concerned.
LOMAX [still remonstrant] But really, dont you know! Oh I say!
LADY BRITOMART [frigidly] What do you wish to convey, Charles?
LOMAX Well, you must admit that this is a bit thick.
LADY BRITOMART [turning with ominous suavity to CUSINS] Adolphus: you are a professor of Greek. Can you translate Charles Lomax’s remarks into reputable English for us?
CUSINS [cautiously] If I may say so, Lady Brit, I think Charles has rather happily expressed what we all feel. Homer, speaking of Autolycus, uses the same phrase.
{18} means a bit thick.
LOMAX [handsomely] Not that I mind, you know, if Sarah dont.
LADY BRITOMART [crushingly] Thank you. Have I your permission, Adolphus, to invite my own husband to my own house?
CUSINS [gallantly] You have my unhesitating support in everything you do.
LADY BRITOMART Sarah: have you nothing to say?
SARAH Do you mean that he is coming regularly to live here?
LADY BRITOMART Certainly not. The spare room is ready for him if he likes to stay for a day or two and see a little more of you; but there are limits.
SARAH Well, he cant eat us, I suppose. I dont mind.
LOMAX [chuckling] I wonder how the old man will take it.
LADY BRITOMART Much as the old woman will, no doubt, Charles.
LOMAX [abashed] I didnt mean — at least —
LADY BRITOMART You didnt think, Charles. You never do; and the result is, you never mean anything. And now please attend to me, children. Your father will be quite a stranger to us.
LOMAX I suppose he hasnt seen Sarah since she was a little kid.
LADY BRITOMART Not since she was a little kid, Charles, as you express it with that elegance of diction and refinement of thought that seem never to desert you. Accordingly — er — [impatiently] Now I have forgotten what I was going to say. That comes of your provoking me to be sarcastic, Charles. Adolphus: will you kindly tell me where I was.
CUSINS [sweetly] You were saying that as Mr. Undershaft has not seen his children since they were babies, he will form his opinion of the way you have brought them up from their behavior to-night, and that therefore you wish us all to be particularly careful to conduct ourselves well, especially Charles.
LOMAX Look here: Lady Brit didnt say that.
LADY BRITOMART [vehemently] I did, Charles. Adolphus’s recollection is perfectly correct. It is most important that you should be good; and I do beg you for once not to pair off into opposite corners and giggle and whisper while I am speaking to your father.
BARBARA All right, mother. We’ll do you credit.
LADY BRITOMART Remember, Charles, that Sarah will want to feel proud of you instead of ashamed of you.
LOMAX Oh I say! theres nothing to be exactly proud of, dont you know.
LADY BRITOMART Well, try and look as if there was. MORRISON, pale and dismayed, breaks into the room in unconcealed disorder.
MORRISON Might I speak a word to you, my lady?
LADY BRITOMART Nonsense! Shew him up.
MORRISON Yes, my lady. [He goes.]
LOMAX Does Morrison know who it is?
LADY BRITOMART Of course. Morrison has always been with us.
LOMAX It must be a regular corker for him, dont you know.
LADY BRITOMART Is this a moment to get on my nerves, Charles, with your outrageous expressions?