Misalliance | Page 5

if youre not
careful youll get it: I'll see to that next time you call me a swine.

BENTLEY. I didnt call you a swine. But _[bursting into a fury of
tears]_ you are a swine: youre a beast: youre a brute: youre a cad: youre
a liar: youre a bully: I should like to wring your damned neck for you.
JOHNNY. [with a derisive laugh] Try it, my son. _[Bentley gives an
inarticulate sob of rage]._ Fighting isnt in your line. Youre too small
and youre too childish. I always suspected that your cleverness wouldnt
come to very much when it was brought up against something solid:
some decent chap's fist, for instance.
BENTLEY. I hope your beastly fist may come up against a mad bull or
a prizefighter's nose, or something solider than me. I dont care about
your fist; but if everybody here dislikes me-- _[he is checked by a sob].
Well, I dont care. [Trying to recover himself]_ I'm sorry I intruded: I
didnt know. [Breaking down again] Oh you beast! you pig! Swine,
swine, swine, swine, swine! Now!
JOHNNY. All right, my lad, all right. Sling your mud as hard as you
please: it wont stick to me. What I want to know is this. How is it that
your father, who I suppose is the strongest man England has produced
in our time--
BENTLEY. You got that out of your halfpenny paper. A lot you know
about him!
JOHNNY. I dont set up to be able to do anything but admire him and
appreciate him and be proud of him as an Englishman. If it wasnt for
my respect for him, I wouldnt have stood your cheek for two days, let
alone two months. But what I cant understand is why he didnt lick it
out of you when you were a kid. For twenty-five years he kept a place
twice as big as England in order: a place full of seditious coffee-colored
heathens and pestilential white agitators in the middle of a lot of savage
tribes. And yet he couldnt keep you in order. I dont set up to be half the
man your father undoubtedly is; but, by George, it's lucky for you you
were not my son. I dont hold with my own father's views about
corporal punishment being wrong. It's necessary for some people; and
I'd have tried it on you until you first learnt to howl and then to behave
yourself.

BENTLEY. [contemptuously] Yes: behavior wouldnt come naturally to
your son, would it?
JOHNNY. [stung into sudden violence] Now you keep a civil tongue in
your head. I'll stand none of your snobbery. I'm just as proud of
Tarleton's Underwear as you are of your father's title and his K.C.B.,
and all the rest of it. My father began in a little hole of a shop in Leeds
no bigger than our pantry down the passage there. He--
BENTLEY. Oh yes: I know. Ive read it. "The Romance of Business, or
The Story of Tarleton's Underwear. Please Take One!" I took one the
day after I first met Hypatia. I went and bought half a dozen
unshrinkable vests for her sake.
JOHNNY. Well: did they shrink?
BENTLEY. Oh, dont be a fool.
JOHNNY. Never mind whether I'm a fool or not. Did they shrink?
Thats the point. Were they worth the money?
BENTLEY. I couldnt wear them: do you think my skin's as thick as
your customers' hides? I'd as soon have dressed myself in a nutmeg
grater.
JOHNNY. Pity your father didnt give your thin skin a jolly good lacing
with a cane--!
BENTLEY. Pity you havnt got more than one idea! If you want to
know, they did try that on me once, when I was a small kid. A silly
governess did it. I yelled fit to bring down the house and went into
convulsions and brain fever and that sort of thing for three weeks. So
the old girl got the sack; and serve her right! After that, I was let do
what I like. My father didnt want me to grow up a broken-spirited
spaniel, which is your idea of a man, I suppose.
JOHNNY. Jolly good thing for you that my father made you come into
the office and shew what you were made of. And it didnt come to much:

let me tell you that. When the Governor asked me where I thought we
ought to put you, I said, "Make him the Office Boy." The Governor
said you were too green. And so you were.
BENTLEY. I daresay. So would you be pretty green if you were
shoved into my father's set. I picked up your silly business in a
fortnight. Youve been at it ten years; and you havnt picked it up yet.