Chapter 94
MAR. A gentle district visitor!
DES. You are orderly, methodical, neat; you have your emotions well under control.
MAR. I have! (Wildly). Master, when I think of all you have done for me, I fall at your feet. I embrace your ankles. I hug your knees! (Doing so.) DES. Hush. This is not well. This is calculated to provoke remark. Be composed, I beg!
MAR. Ah! you are angry with poor little Mad Margaret!
DES. No, not angry; but a district visitor should learn to eschew melodrama. Visit the poor, by all means, and give them tea and barley-water, but don't do it as if you were administering a bowl of deadly nightshade. It upsets them. Then when you nurse sick people, and find them not as well as could be expected, why go into hysterics?
MAR. Why not?
DES. Because it's too jumpy for a sick-room.
MAR. How strange! Oh, Master! Master!--how shall I express the all-absorbing grat.i.tude that--(about to throw herself at his feet).
DES. Now! (Warningly).
MAR. Yes, I know, dear--it shan't occur again. (He is seated--she sits on the ground by him.) Shall I tell you one of poor Mad Margaret's odd thoughts? Well, then, when I am lying awake at night, and the pale moonlight streams through the latticed cas.e.m.e.nt, strange fancies crowd upon my poor mad brain, and I sometimes think that if we could hit upon some word for you to use whenever I am about to relapse--some word that teems with hidden meaning--like "Basingstoke"--it might recall me to my saner self. For, after all, I am only Mad Margaret! Daft Meg!
Poor Meg! He! he! he!
DES. Poor child, she wanders! But soft--some one comes--Margaret--pray recollect yourself--Basingstoke, I beg!
Margaret, if you don't Basingstoke at once, I shall be seriously angry.
MAR. (recovering herself). Basingstoke it is!
DES. Then make it so.
(Enter Robin. He starts on seeing them.)
ROB. Despard! And his young wife! This visit is unexpected.
MAR. Shall I fly at him? Shall I tear him limb from limb?
Shall I rend him asunder? Say but the word and-- DES. Basingstoke!
MAR. (suddenly demure). Basingstoke it is!
DES. (aside). Then make it so. (Aloud.) My brother--I call you brother still, despite your horrible profligacy--we have come to urge you to abandon the evil courses to which you have committed yourself, and at any cost to become a pure and blameless ratepayer.
ROB. But I've done no wrong yet.
MAR. (wildly). No wrong! He has done no wrong! Did you hear that!
DES. Basingstoke!
MAR. (recovering herself). Basingstoke it is!
DES. My brother--I still call you brother, you observe--you forget that you have been, in the eye of the law, a Bad Baronet of Ruddigore for ten years--and you are therefore responsible--in the eye of the law--for all the misdeeds committed by the unhappy gentleman who occupied your place.
ROB. I see! Bless my heart, I never thought of that! Was I very bad?
DES. Awful. Wasn't he? (To Margaret).
ROB. And I've been going on like this for how long?
DES. Ten years! Think of all the atrocities you have committed--by attorney as it were--during that period. Remember how you trifled with this poor child's affections--how you raised her hopes on high (don't cry, my love--Basingstoke, you know), only to trample them in the dust
ROB. Did she? What a scoundrel I must have been! There, there--don't cry, my dear (to Margaret, who is sobbing on Robin's breast), it's all right now. Birmingham, you know--Birmingham-- MAR. (sobbing). It's Ba--Ba--Basingstoke!
ROB. Basingstoke! Of course it is--Basingstoke.
MAR. Then make it so!
ROB. There, there--it's all right--he's married you now--that is, I've married you (turning to Despard)--I say, which of us has married her?
DES. Oh, I've married her.
ROB. (aside). Oh, I'm glad of that. (To Margaret.) Yes, he's married you now (pa.s.sing her over to Despard), and anything more disreputable than my conduct seems to have been I've never even heard of. But my mind is made up--I will defy my ancestors.
I will refuse to obey their behests, thus, by courting death, atone in some degree for the infamy of my career!
MAR. I knew it--I knew it--G.o.d bless you--(Hysterically).
DES. Basingstoke!
MAR. Basingstoke it is! (Recovers herself.)
PATTER-TRIO.
ROBIN, DESPARD, and MARGARET.
ROB. My eyes are fully open to my awful situation-- I shall go at once to Roderic and make him an oration.
I shall tell him I've recovered my forgotten moral senses, And I don't care twopence-halfpenny for any consequences.
Now I do not want to perish by the sword or by the dagger, But a martyr may indulge a little pardonable swagger, And a word or two of compliment my vanity would flatter, But I've got to die tomorrow, so it really doesn't matter!
DES. So it really doesn't matter--
MAR. So it really doesn't matter--
ALL. So it really doesn't matter, matter, matter, matter, matter!
MAR. If were not a little mad and generally silly I should give you my advice upon the subject, w.i.l.l.y-nilly; I should show you in a moment how to grapple with the question, And you'd really be astonished at the force of my suggestion.
On the subject I shall write you a most valuable letter, Full of excellent suggestions when I feel a little better, But at present I'm afraid I am as mad as any hatter, So I'll keep 'em to myself, for my opinion doesn't matter!
DES. Her opinion doesn't matter--
ROB. Her opinion doesn't matter--
ALL. Her opinion doesn't matter, matter, matter, matter, matter!
DES. If I had been so lucky as to have a steady brother Who could talk to me as we are talking now to one another-- Who could give me good advice when he discovered I was erring (Which is just the very favour which on you I am conferring), My story would have made a rather interesting idyll, And I might have lived and died a very decent indiwiddle.
This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter Isn't generally heard, and if it is it doesn't matter!
ROB. If it is it doesn't matter--
MAR. If it is it doesn't matter--
ALL. If it is it doesn't matter, matter, matter, matter, matter!
(Exeunt Despard and Margaret.)
(Enter Adam.)
ADAM (guiltily). Master--the deed is done!
ROB. What deed?
ADAM. She is here--alone, unprotected-- ROB. Who?
ADAM. The maiden. I've carried her off--I had a hard task, for she fought like a tiger-cat!
ROB. Great heaven, I had forgotten her! I had hoped to have died unspotted by crime, but I am foiled again--and by a tiger-cat! Produce her--and leave us!
(Adam introduces Dame Hannah, very much excited, and exits.)
ROB. Dame Hannah! This is--this is not what I expected.
HAN. Well, sir, and what would you with me? Oh, you have begun bravely--bravely indeed! Unappalled by the calm dignity of blameless womanhood, your minion has torn me from my spotless home, and dragged me, blindfold and shrieking, through hedges, over stiles, and across a very difficult country, and left me, helpless and trembling, at your mercy! Yet not helpless, coward sir, for approach one step--nay, but the twentieth part of one poor inch--and this poniard (produces a very small dagger) shall teach ye what it is to lay unholy hands on old Stephen Trusty's daughter!
ROB. Madam, I am extremely sorry for this. It is not at all what I intended--anything more correct--more deeply respectful than my intentions towards you, it would be impossible for any one--however particular--to desire.
HAN. Bah, I am not to be tricked by smooth words, hypocrite! But be warned in time, for there are, without, a hundred gallant hearts whose trusty blades would hack him limb from limb who dared to lay unholy hands on old Stephen Trusty's daughter!
ROB. And this is what it is to embark upon a career of unlicensed pleasure!
(Dame Hannah, who has taken a formidable dagger from one of the armed figures, throws her small dagger to Robin.)
HAN. Harkye, miscreant, you have secured me, and I am your poor prisoner; but if you think I cannot take care of myself you are very much mistaken. Now then, it's one to one, and let the best man win!
(Making for him.)
ROB. (in an agony of terror). Don't! don't look at me like that! I can't bear it! Roderic! Uncle! Save me!