The Title | Page 4

I like it any more.
TRANTO. Now please don't let Auntie Joe worry you. She's my cross, not yours.
HILDEGARDE. Yes. But considered as a cross, your Auntie Joe is nothing to my brother John, who quite justly calls his sister's cookery stuff 'tripe.' It was a most ingenious camouflage of yours to have me pretending to be the author of that food economy 'tripe,' so as to cover my writing quite different articles for The Echo and your coming here to see me so often. Most ingenious. Worthy of a newspaper proprietor. But why should I be saddled with 'tripe' that isn't mine?
TRANTO. Why, indeed! Then you think we ought to encourage the volcano with a lighted match--and run?
HILDEGARDE. I'm ready if you are.
TRANTO. Oh! I'm ready. Secrecy was a great stunt at first. Letting out the secret will be an even greater stunt now. It'll make the finest newspaper story since the fearful fall of the last Cabinet. Sampson Straight--equals Miss Hildegarde Culver, the twenty-one year old daughter of the Controller of Accounts! Typist in the Food Department, by day! Journalistic genius by night! The terror of Ministers! Read by all London! Raised the circulation of The Echo two hundred per cent! Phenomenon unique in the annals of Fleet Street! (_In a different tone, noticing_ Hildegarde's _face_). Crude headlines, I admit, but that's what Uncle Joe has brought us to. We have to compete with Uncle Joe....
HILDEGARDE. Of course I shall have to leave home.
TRANTO. Leave home!
HILDEGARDE. Yes, and live by myself in rooms.
TRANTO. But why?
HILDEGARDE. I couldn't possibly stay here. Think how it would compromise father with the War Cabinet if I did. It might ruin him. And as accounts are everything in modern warfare, it might lose the war. But that's nothing--it's mamma I'm thinking of. Do you forget that Sampson Straight, being a young woman of advanced ideas, has written about everything, _everything_--yes, and several other subjects besides? For instance, here's the article I was revising when you came in. (_Shows the title-page to_ Tranto.)
TRANTO. Splendid! You're the most courageous creature I ever met.
HILDEGARDE. Possibly. But not courageous enough to offer to kiss mamma when I went to bed on the night that _that (indicating the article_) had appeared in print under my own name. You don't know mamma.
TRANTO. But dash it! You could eat your mother!
HILDEGARDE. Pardon me. The contrary is the fact. Mamma could eat me.
TRANTO. But you're the illustrious Sampson Straight. There's more intelligence in your little finger than there is in your mother's whole body. See how you write.
HILDEGARDE. Write! I only began to write as a relief from mamma. I escaped secretly into articles like escaping into an underground passage. But as for facing mamma in the open!... Even father scarcely ever does that; and when he does, we hold our breath, and the cook turns teetotal. It wouldn't be the slightest use me trying to explain the situation logically to mamma. She wouldn't understand. She's far too clever to understand anything she doesn't like. Perhaps that's the secret of her power. No, if the truth about Sampson Straight is to come out I must leave home--quietly but firmly leave home. And why not? I can keep myself in splendour on Sampson's earnings. And the break is bound to come sooner or later. I admit I didn't begin very seriously, but reading my own articles has gradually made me serious. I feel I have a cause. A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.
TRANTO. Cause be hanged! Suffer be hanged! High heels be hanged! Champagne--(_stops_). Miss Culver, if a disclosure means your leaving home I won't agree to any disclosure whatever. I will--not--agree. We'll sit tight on the volcano.
HILDEGARDE. But why won't you agree?
TRANTO (_excited_). Why won't I agree! Why won't I agree! Because I don't want you to leave home. I know you're a born genius--a marvel, a miracle, a prodigy, an incredible orchid, the most brilliant journalist in London. I'm fully aware of all that. But I do not and will not see you as a literary bachelor living with a cause and holding receptions of serious people in chambers furnished by Roger Fry. I like to think of you at home, here, in this charming atmosphere, amid the delightful vicissitudes of family existence, and--well, I like to think of you as a woman.
HILDEGARDE (_calmly and teasingly_). Mr. Tranto, we are forgetting one thing.
TRANTO. What's that?
HILDEGARDE. You're an editor, and I'm a contributor whom you've never met.
Enter Mrs. Culver (_L_).
MRS. CULVER. Mr. Tranto, how are you? (Shaking hands.) I'm delighted to see you. So sorry I didn't warn you we dine half an hour later--thanks to the scandalous way the Government slave-drives my poor husband.