Plays Unpleasant (13 page)

SARTORIUS
. Blanche, my love.

BLANCHE
. Yes.

SARTORIUS
. I had a long talk to the doctor today about our going abroad.

BLANCHE
[
impatiently
] I am quite well; and I will not go abroad. I loathe the very thought of the Continent. Why will you bother me so about my health?

SARTORIUS
. It was not about your health, Blanche, but about my own.

BLANCHE
[
rising
] Yours! [
She goes anxiously to him
]. Oh, papa, theres nothing the matter with you, I hope?

SARTORIUS
. There will be: there must be, Blanche, long before you begin to consider yourself an old woman.

BLANCHE
. But theres nothing the matter now?

SARTORIUS
. Well, my dear, the doctor says I need change, travel, excitement –

BLANCHE
. Excitement! You need excitement! [
She laughs joyously, and sits down on the rug at his feet
]. How is it, papa, that you, who are so clever with everybody else, are not a bit clever with me? Do you think I cant see through your
little plan to take me abroad? Since I will not be the invalid and allow you to be the nurse, you are to be the invalid and I am to be the nurse.

SARTORIUS
. Well, Blanche, if you will have it that you are well and have nothing preying on your spirits, I must insist on being ill and have something preying on mine. And indeed, my girl, there is no use in our going on as we have for the last four months. You have not been happy; and I have been very far from comfortable. [
Blanche's face clouds: she turns away from him, and sits dumb and brooding. He waits in vain for some reply; then adds in a lower tone
] Need you be so inflexible, Blanche?

BLANCHE
. I thought you admired inflexibility: you have always prided yourself on it.

SARTORIUS
. Nonsense, my dear, nonsense! I have had to give in often enough. And I could shew you plenty of soft fellows who have done as well as I, and enjoyed themselves more, perhaps. If it is only for the sake of inflexibility that you are standing out –

BLANCHE
. I am not standing out. I dont know what you mean. [
She tries to rise and go away
].

SARTORIUS
[
catching her arm and arresting her on her knees
] Come, my child! you must not trifle with me as if I were a stranger. You are fretting because –

BLANCHE
[
violently twisting herself free and speaking as she rises
] If you say it, papa, I will kill myself. It is not true. If he were here on his knees tonight, I would walk out of the house sooner than endure it. [
She goes out excitedly
].

Sartorius, greatly troubled, turns again to the fire with a heavy sigh
.

SARTORIUS
[
gazing gloomily into the glow
] Now if I fight it out with her, no more comfort for months! I might as well live with my clerk or my servant. And if I give in now, I shall have to give in always. Well! I cant help it. I have stuck to having my own way all my life; but there must be an end to that drudgery some day. She is young: let her have her turn at it.

The parlormaid comes in, evidently excited
.

THE PARLORMAID
. Please, sir, Mr Lickcheese wants to see you very particlar. On important business. Your business, he told me to say.

SARTORIUS
. Mr Lickcheese! Do you mean Lickcheese who used to come here on my business?

THE PARLORMAID
. Yes, sir. But indeed, sir, youd scarcely know him.

SARTORIUS
[
frowning
] Hm! Starving, I suppose. Come to beg?

THE PARLORMAID
[
intensely repudiating the idea
] O-o-o-o-h NO, sir. Quite the gentleman, sir! Sealskin overcoat, sir! Come in a hansom, all shaved and clean! I'm sure he's come into a fortune, sir.

SARTORIUS
. Hm! Shew him up.

Lickcheese, who has been waiting at the door, instantly comes in. The change in his appearance is dazzling. He is in evening dress, with an overcoat lined throughout with furs presenting all the hues of the tiger. His shirt is fastened at the breast with a single diamond stud. His silk hat is of the glossiest black; a handsome gold watch-chain hangs like a garland on his filled-out waistcoat; he has shaved his whiskers and grown a moustache, the ends of which are waxed and pointed. As Sartorius stares speechless at him, he stands, smiling, to be admired, intensely enjoying the effect he is producing. The parlormaid, hardly less pleased with her own share in this coup-de-théâtre, goes out beaming, full of the news for the kitchen. Lickcheese clinches the situation by a triumphant nod at Sartorius
.

SARTORIUS
[
bracing himself: hostile
] Well?

LICKCHEESE
. Quite well, Sartorius, thankee.

SARTORIUS
. I was not asking after your health, sir, as you know, I think, as well as I do. What is your business?

LICKCHEESE
. Business that I can take elsewhere if I meet with less civility than I please to put up with, Sartorius. You and me is man and man now. It was money that used to be my master, and not you: dont think it. Now that I'm independent in respect of money –

SARTORIUS
[
crossing determinedly to the door, and holding it open
] You can take your independence out of my house, then. I wont have it here.

LICKCHEESE
[
indulgently
] Come, Sartorius: dont be stiff-necked. I come here as a friend to put money in your pocket. No use your lettin on to me that youre above money. Eh?

SARTORIUS
[
hesitates, and at last shuts the door saying guardedly
] How much money?

LICKCHEESE
[
victorious, going to Blanche's chair and taking off his overcoat
] Ah! there you speak like yourself, Sartorius. Now suppose you ask me to sit down and make myself comfortable.

SARTORIUS
[
coming from the door
] I have a mind to put you downstairs by the back of your neck, you infernal blackguard.

LICKCHEESE
[
not a bit ruffled, hangs his overcoat on the back of Blanche's chair, pulling a cigar case out of one of the pockets as he does so
] You and me is too much of a pair for me to take anything you say in bad part, Sartorius. Ave a cigar?

SARTORIUS
. No smoking here: this is my daughter's room. However, sit down, sit down. [
They sit
].

LICKCHEESE
. I' bin gittin on a little since I saw you last.

SARTORIUS
. So I see.

LICKCHEESE
. I owe it partly to you, you know. Does that surprise you?

SARTORIUS
. It doesnt concern me.

LICKCHEESE
. So you think, Sartorius; because it never did concern you how I got on, so long as I got you on by bringin in the rents. But I picked up something for myself down at robbins's row.

SARTORIUS
. I always thought so. Have you come to make restitution?

LICKCHEESE
. You wouldnt take it if I offered it to you, sartorius. it wasnt money: It was knowledge: knowledge
of the great public question of the Ousing of the Working Classes. You know theres a Royal Commission on it, dont you?

SARTORIUS
. Oh, I see. Youve been giving evidence.

LICKCHEESE
. Giving evidence! Not me. What good would that do me? Only my expenses; and that not on the professional scale, neither. No: I gev no evidence. But I'll tell you what I did. I kep it back, jast to oblige one or two people whose feelins would ‘a bin urt by seeing their names in a bluebook as keepin a fever den. Their Agent got so friendly with me over it that he put his name on a bill of mine to the tune of – well, no matter: it gev me a start; and a start was all I ever wanted to get on my feet. Ive got a copy of the first report of the Commission in the pocket of my overcoat. [
He rises and gets at his overcoat, from a pocket of which he takes a bluebook
]. I turned down the page to shew you: I thought youd like to see it. [
He doubles the book back at the place indicated, and hands it to sartorius
].

SARTORIUS
. So blackmail is the game, eh? [
Heputs the book on the table without looking at it, and strikes it emphatically with his fist
]. I dont care that for my name being in bluebooks. My friends dont read them; and I'm neither a Cabinet Minister nor a candidate for Parliament. Theres nothing to be got out of me on that lay.

LICKCHEESE
[
shocked
] Blackmail! Oh, Mr Sartorius, do you think I would let out a word about your premises? Round on an old pal! no: that aint Lickcheese's way. Besides, they know all about you already. Them stairs that you and me quarrelled about, they was a whole arternoon ex-aminin the clergyman that made such a fuss – you remember? – about the women that was urt on it. He made the worst he could of it, in an ungentlemanly, unchristian spirit. I wouldnt have that clergyman's disposition for worlds. Oh no: thats not what was in my thoughts.

SARTORIUS
. Come, come, man! what was in your thoughts? Out with it.

LICKCHEESE
[
with provoking deliberation, smiling and looking mysteriously at him
] You aint spent a few hundreds in repairs since we parted, ave you? [
Sartorius, losing patience, makes a threatening movement
]. Now dont fly out at me. I know a landlord that owned as beastly a slum as you could find in London, down there by the Tower. By my advice that man put half the houses into first-class repair, and let the other half to a new Company: the North Thames Iced Mutton Depot Company, of which I hold a few shares: promoter's shares. And what was the end of it, do you think?

SARTORIUS
. Smash, I suppose.

LICKCHEESE
. Smash! not a bit of it. Compensation, Mr Sartorius, compensation. Do you understand that?

SARTORIUS
. Compensation for what?

LICKCHEESE
. Why, the land was wanted for an extension of the Mint; and the Company had to be bought out, and the buildings compensated for. Somebody has to know these things beforehand, you know, no matter how dark theyre kept.

SARTORIUS
[
interested, but cautious
] Well?

LICKCHEESE
. Is that all you have to say to me, Mr Sartorius? Well! as if I was next door's dog! Suppose I'd got wind of a new street that would knock down Robbins's Row and turn Burke's Walk into a frontage worth thirty pound a foot! would you say no more to me than [
mimicking
] ‘Well'? [
Sartorius hesitates, looking at him in great doubt. Lickcheese rises and exhibits himself
]. Come! look at my get-up, Mr Sartorius. Look at this watch-chain! Look at the corporation Ive got on me! Do you think all that came from keeping my mouth shut? No: it came from keeping ears and eyes open.

Blanche comes in, followed by the parlormaid, who has a silver tray on which she collects the coffee cups. Sartorius, impatient at the interruption, rises and motions Lickcheese to the door of the study
.

SARTORIUS
. Sh! We must talk this over in the study. There is a good fire there; and you can smoke. Blanche: an old friend of ours.

LICKCHEESE
. And a kind one to me. I hope I see you well, Miss Blanche.

BLANCHE
. Why, it's Mr Lickcheese! I hardly knew you.

LICKCHEESE
. I find you a little changed yourself, miss.

BLANCHE
[
hastily
] Oh, I am the same as ever. How are Mrs Lickcheese and the chil –

SARTORIUS
[
impatiently
] We have business to transact, Blanche. You can talk to Mr Lickcheese afterwards. Come on.

Sartorius and Lickcheese go into the study. Blanche, surprised at her father's abruptness, looks after them for a moment. Then, seeing Lickcheese's overcoat on her chair, she takes it up, amused, and looks at the fur
.

THE PARLORMAID
. Oh, we are fine, aint we, Miss Blanche? I think Mr Lickcheese must have come into a legacy. [
Confidentially
] I wonder what he can want with the master, Miss Blanche! He brought him this big book. [
She shews the bluebook to Blanche
].

BLANCHE
[
her curiosity roused
] Let me see. [
She takes the book and looks at it
]. Theres something about papa in it. [
She sits down and begins to read
].

THE PARLORMAID
[
folding the tea-table and putting it out of the way
] He looks ever s'much younger, Miss Blanche, dont he? I couldnt help laughing when I saw him with his whiskers shaved off: it do look so silly when youre not accustomed to it. [
No answer from Blanche
]. You havnt finished your coffee, miss: I suppose I may take it away? [
No answer
]. Oh, you are interested in Mr Lickcheese's book, miss.

Blanche springs up. The parlormaid looks at her face, and instantly hurries out of the room on tiptoe with her tray
.

BLANCHE
. So that was why he would not touch the money. [
She tries to tear the book across. Finding this impossible she
throws it violently into the fireplace. It falls into the fender
]. Oh, if only a girl could have no father, no family, just as I have no mother! Clergyman! beast! ‘The worst slum landlord in London.' ‘Slum landlord.' Oh! [
She covers her face with her hands, and sinks shuddering into the chair on which the overcoat lies. The study door opens
].