Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw [hardest books to read txt] 📗

fury. Go upstairs and ask Mr. Tanner to be good enough to step down here. The parlormaid goes out; and Ramsden returns to the fireplace, as to a fortified position. I must say that of all the confounded pieces of impertinence⁠—well, if these are Anarchist manners I hope you like them. And Annie with him! Annie! A⁠—He chokes. Octavius Yes: that’s what surprises me. He’s so desperately afraid of Ann. There must be something the matter. Mr. John Tanner suddenly opens the door and enters. He is too young to be described simply as a big man with a beard. But it is already plain that middle life will find him in that category. He has still some of the slimness of youth; but youthfulness is not the effect he aims at: his frock coat would befit a prime minister; and a certain high chested carriage of the shoulders, a lofty pose of the head, and the Olympian majesty with which a mane, or rather a huge wisp, of hazel colored hair is thrown back from an imposing brow, suggest Jupiter rather than Apollo. He is prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark the snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the thirty-secondth of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad. He is carefully dressed, not from the vanity that cannot resist finery, but from a sense of the importance of everything he does which leads him to make as much of paying a call as other men do of getting married or laying a foundation stone. A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a megalomaniac, who would be lost without a sense of humor. Just at present the sense of humor is in abeyance. To say that he is excited is nothing: all his moods are phases of excitement. He is now in the panic-stricken phase; and he walks straight up to Ramsden as if with the fixed intention of shooting him on his own hearthrug. But what he pulls from his breast pocket is not a pistol, but a foolscap document which he thrusts under the indignant nose of Ramsden as he exclaims⁠— Tanner Ramsden: do you know what that is? Ramsden Loftily. No, Sir. Tanner It’s a copy of Whitefield’s will. Ann got it this morning. Ramsden When you say Ann, you mean, I presume, Miss Whitefield. Tanner I mean our Ann, your Ann, Tavy’s Ann, and now, Heaven help me, my Ann! Octavius Rising, very pale. What do you mean? Tanner Mean! He holds up the will. Do you know who is appointed Ann’s guardian by this will? Ramsden Coolly. I believe I am. Tanner You! You and I, man. I! I!! I!!! Both of us! He flings the will down on the writing table. Ramsden You! Impossible. Tanner It’s only too hideously true. He throws himself into Octavius’s chair. Ramsden: get me out of it somehow. You don’t know Ann as well as I do. She’ll commit every crime a respectable woman can; and she’ll justify every one of them by saying that it was the wish of her guardians. She’ll put everything on us; and we shall have no more control over her than a couple of mice over a cat. Octavius Jack: I wish you wouldn’t talk like that about Ann. Tanner This chap’s in love with her: that’s another complication. Well, she’ll either jilt him and say I didn’t approve of him, or marry him and say you ordered her to. I tell you, this is the most staggering blow that has ever fallen on a man of my age and temperament. Ramsden Let me see that will, sir. He goes to the writing table and picks it up. I cannot believe that my old friend Whitefield would have shown such a want of confidence in me as to associate me with⁠—His countenance falls as he reads. Tanner It’s all my own doing: that’s the horrible irony of it. He told me one day that you were to be Ann’s guardian; and like a fool I began arguing with him about the folly of leaving a young woman under the control of an old man with obsolete ideas. Ramsden Stupended. My ideas obsolete!!!!! Tanner Totally. I had just finished an essay called “Down with Government by the Greyhaired;” and I was full of arguments and illustrations. I said the proper thing was to combine the experience of an old hand with the vitality of a young one. Hang me if he didn’t take me at my word and alter his will⁠—it’s dated only a fortnight after that conversation⁠—appointing me as joint guardian with you! Ramsden Pale and determined. I shall refuse to act. Tanner What’s the good of that? I’ve been refusing all the way from Richmond; but Ann keeps on saying that of course she’s only an orphan; and that she can’t expect the people who were glad to come to the house in her father’s time to trouble much about her now. That’s the latest game. An orphan! It’s like hearing an ironclad talk about being at the mercy of the winds and waves. Octavius This is not fair, Jack. She is an orphan. And you ought to stand by her. Tanner Stand by her! What danger is she in? She has the law on her side; she has popular sentiment on her side; she has plenty of money and no conscience. All she wants with me is to load up all her moral responsibilities on me, and do as she likes at the expense of my character. I can’t control her; and she can compromise me as much as she likes. I might as well be her husband. Ramsden You can refuse to accept the guardianship. I shall certainly refuse to hold it jointly with you. Tanner Yes; and what will she say to that? What does she say to it? Just that her father’s wishes are sacred to her, and that she shall always look up to me as her guardian whether I