Five Little Plays Part 7

CROCKSTEAD. The possession of millions, you see, Lady Aline, puts you into eternal quarantine. It is a kind of yellow fever, with the difference that people are perpetually anxious to catch your complaint. But we digress. To return to the question of our marriage--

ALINE. I beg your pardon.

CROCKSTEAD. I presume that it is--arranged?

ALINE. [_Haughtily._] Mr. Crockstead, let me remind you that frankness has its limits: exceeding these, it is apt to degenerate into impertinence.

Be good enough to conduct me to the ball-room.

[_She moves to the door._

CROCKSTEAD. You have five sisters, I believe, Lady Aline? [ALINE _stops short._] All younger than yourself, all marriageable, and all unmarried?

[ALINE _hangs her head and is silent._

CROCKSTEAD. Your father--

ALINE. [_Fiercely._] Not a word of my father!

CROCKSTEAD. Your father is a gentleman. The breed is rare, and very fine when you get it. But he is exceedingly poor. People marry for money nowadays; and your mother will be very unhappy if this marriage of ours falls through.

ALINE. [_Moving a step towards him._] Is it to oblige my mother, then, that you desire to marry me?

CROCKSTEAD. Well, no. But you see I must marry some one, in mere self-defence; and honestly, I think you will do at least as well as any one else. [ALINE _bursts out laughing._] That strikes you as funny?

ALINE. If you had the least grain of chivalrous feeling, you would realise that the man who could speak to a woman as you have spoken to me--

[_She pauses._

CROCKSTEAD. Yes?

ALINE. I leave you to finish the sentence.

CROCKSTEAD. Thank you. I will finish it my own way. I will say that when a woman deliberately tries to wring an offer of marriage from a man whom she does not love, she deserves to be spoken to as I have spoken to you, Lady Aline.

ALINE. [_Scornfully._] Love! What has love to do with marriage?

CROCKSTEAD. That remark rings hollow. You have been good enough to tell me of your cousin, whom you did love--

ALINE. Well?

CROCKSTEAD. And with whom you would have eloped, had your mother not prevented you.

ALINE. I most certainly should.

CROCKSTEAD. So you see that at one period of your life you thought differently.--You were very fond of him?

ALINE. I have told you.

CROCKSTEAD. [_Meditatively._] If I had been he, mother or no mother, money or no money, I would have carried you off. I fancy it must be pleasant to be loved by you, Lady Aline.

ALINE. [_Dropping a mock curtsey, as she sits on the sofa._] You do me too much honour.

CROCKSTEAD. [_Still thoughtful, moving about the room._] Next to being king, it is good to be maker of kings. Where is this cousin now?

ALINE. In America. But might I suggest that we have exhausted the subject?

CROCKSTEAD. Do you remember your "Arabian Nights," Lady Aline?

ALINE. Vaguely.

CROCKSTEAD. You have at least not forgotten that sublime Caliph, Haroun Al-Raschid?

ALINE. Oh, no--but why?

CROCKSTEAD. We millionaires are the Caliphs to-day; and we command more faithful than ever bowed to them. And, like that old scoundrel Haroun, we may at times permit ourselves a respectable impulse. What is your cousin's address?

ALINE. Again I ask--why?

CROCKSTEAD. I will put him in a position to marry you.

ALINE. [_In extreme surprise._] What! [_She rises._

CROCKSTEAD. Oh, don't be alarmed, I'll manage it pleasantly. I'll give him tips, shares, speculate for him, make him a director of one or two of my companies. He shall have an income of four thousand a year. You can live on that.

ALINE. You are not serious?

CROCKSTEAD. Oh yes; and though men may not like me, they always trust my word. You may.

ALINE. And why will you do this thing?

CROCKSTEAD. Call it caprice--call it a mere vulgar desire to let my magnificence dazzle you--call it the less vulgar desire to know that my money has made you happy with the man you love.

ALINE. That is generous.

CROCKSTEAD. I remember an old poem I learnt at school--which told how Frederick the Great coveted a mill that adjoined a favourite estate of his; but the miller refused to sell. Frederick could have turned him out, of course--there was not very much public opinion in those days--but he respected the miller's firmness, and left him in solid possession. And mark that, at that very same time, he annexed--in other words stole--the province of Silesia.

ALINE. Ah--

CROCKSTEAD. [_Moving to the fireplace._]

"Ce sont la jeux de Princes: Ils respectent un meunier, Ils volent une province."

[_The music stops._

ALINE. You speak French?

CROCKSTEAD. I am fond of it. It is the true and native language of insincerity.

ALINE. And yet you seem sincere.