The Complete Works of George Bernard Shaw. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
care what you say to me. You have a way of giving things a turn that makes it a pleasure to be shut up by you; and if I were a gentleman, as I ought to be, instead of a poor devil of a professional pug, I would—” He recollected himself, and turned quite pale. There was a pause.
“Let me remind you,” said Lydia, composedly, though she too had changed color at the beginning of his outburst, “that we are both wanted elsewhere at present; I by Miss Goff, and you by your servant, who has been hovering about us and looking at you anxiously for some minutes.”
Cashel turned fiercely, and saw Mellish standing a little way off, sulkily watching him. Lydia took the opportunity, and left the place. As she retreated she could hear that they were at high words together; but she could not distinguish what they were saying. Fortunately so; for their language was villainous.
She found Alice in the library, seated bolt upright in a chair that would have tempted a goodhumored person to recline. Lydia sat down in silence. Alice, presently looking at her, discovered that she was in a fit of noiseless laughter. The effect, in contrast to her habitual self-possession, was so strange that Alice almost forgot to be offended.
“I am glad to see that it is not hard to amuse you,” she said.
Lydia waited to recover herself thoroughly, and then replied, “I have not laughed so three times in my life. Now, Alice, put aside your resentment of our neighbor’s impudence for the moment, and tell me what you think of him.”
“I have not thought about him at all, I assure you,” said Alice, disdainfully.
“Then think about him for a moment to oblige me, and let me know the result.”
“Really, you have had much more opportunity of judging than I. I have hardly spoken to him.”
Lydia rose patiently and went to the bookcase. “You have a cousin at one of the universities, have you not?” she said, seeking along the shelf for a volume.
“Yes,” replied Alice, speaking very sweetly to atone for her want of amiability on the previous subject.
“Then perhaps you know something of university slang?”
“I never allow him to talk slang to me,” said Alice, quickly.
“You may dictate modes of expression to a single man, perhaps, but not to a whole university,” said Lydia, with a quiet scorn that brought unexpected tears to Alice’s eyes. “Do you know what a pug is?”
“A pug!” said Alice, vacantly. “No; I have heard of a bulldog — a proctor’s bulldog, but never a pug.”
“I must try my slang dictionary,” said Lydia, taking down a book and opening it. “Here it is. ‘Pug — a fighting man’s idea of the contracted word to be produced from pugilist.’ What an extraordinary definition! A fighting man’s idea of a contraction! Why should a man have a special idea of a contraction when he is fighting; or why should he think of such a thing at all under such circumstances? Perhaps ‘fighting man’ is slang too. No; it is not given here. Either I mistook the word, or it has some signification unknown to the compiler of my dictionary.”
“It seems quite plain to me,” said Alice. “Pug means pugilist.”
“But pugilism is boxing; it is not a profession. I suppose all men are more or less pugilists. I want a sense of the word in which it denotes a calling or occupation of some kind. I fancy it means a demonstrator of anatomy. However, it does not matter.”
“Where did you meet with it?”
“Mr. Byron used it just now.”
“Do you really like that man?” said Alice, returning to the subject more humbly than she had quitted it.
“So far, I do not dislike him. He puzzles me. If the roughness of his manner is an affectation I have never seen one so successful before.”
“Perhaps he does not know any better. His coarseness did not strike me as being affected at all.”
“I should agree with you but for one or two remarks that fell from him. They showed an insight into the real nature of scientific knowledge, and an instinctive sense of the truths underlying words, which I have never met with except in men of considerable culture and experience. I suspect that his manner is deliberately assumed in protest against the selfish vanity which is the common source of social polish. It is partly natural, no doubt. He seems too impatient to choose his words heedfully. Do you ever go to the theatre?”
“No,” said Alice, taken aback by this apparent irrelevance. “My father disapproved of it. But I was there once. I saw the ‘Lady of Lyons.’”
“There is a famous actress, Adelaide Gisborne—”
“It was she whom I saw as the Lady of Lyons. She did it beautifully.”
“Did Mr. Byron remind you of her?”
Alice stared incredulously at Lydia. “I do not think there can be two people in the world less like one another,” she said.
“Nor do I,” said Lydia, meditatively. “But I think their dissimilarity owes its emphasis to some lurking likeness. Otherwise how could he have reminded me of her?” Lydia, as she spoke, sat down with a troubled expression, as if trying to unravel her thoughts. “And yet,” she added, presently, “my theatrical associations are so complex that—” A long silence ensued, during which Alice, conscious of some unusual stir in her patroness, watched her furtively and wondered what would happen next.
“Alice.”
“Yes.”
“My mind is exercising itself in spite of me on small and impertinent matters — a sure symptom of failing mental health. My presence here is only one of several attempts that I have made to live idly since my father’s death. They have all failed. Work has become necessary to me. I will go to London tomorrow.”
Alice looked up in dismay; for this seemed equivalent to a dismissal. But her face expressed nothing but polite indifference.
“We shall have time to run through all the follies of the season before June, when I hope to return here and set to work at a book I have planned. I must collect the material for it in London. If I leave town before the season is over, and you are unwilling to come away with me, I can easily find some one who will take care of you as long as you please to stay. I wish it were June already!”
Alice preferred Lydia’s womanly impatience to her fatalistic calm. It relieved her sense of inferiority, which familiarity had increased rather than diminished. Yet she was beginning to persuade herself, with some success, that the propriety of Lydia’s manners was at least questionable. That morning Miss Carew had not scrupled to ask a man what his profession was; and this, at least, Alice congratulated herself on being too wellbred to do. She had quite lost her awe of the servants, and had begun to address them with an unconscious haughtiness and a conscious politeness that were making the word “upstart” common in the servants’ hall. Bashville, the footman, had risked his popularity there by opining that Miss Goff was a fine young woman.
Bashville was in his twenty-fourth year, and stood five feet ten in his stockings. At the sign of the Green Man in the village he was known as a fluent orator and keen political debater. In the stables he was deferred to as an authority on sporting affairs, and an expert wrestler in the Cornish fashion. The women servants regarded him with undissembled admiration. They vied with one another in inventing expressions of delight when he recited before them, which, as he had a good memory and was fond of poetry, he often did. They were proud to go out walking with him. But his attentions never gave rise to jealousy; for it was an open secret in the servants’ hall that he loved his mistress. He had never said anything to that effect, and no one dared allude to it in his presence, much less rally him on his weakness; but his passion was well known for all that, and it seemed by no means so hopeless to the younger members of the domestic staff as it did to the cook, the butler, and Bashville himself. Miss Carew, who knew the value of good servants, appreciated her footman’s smartness, and paid him accordingly;