第18章

[The Lady and the Problem.]

She is a good woman, the Heroine of the Problem Play, but accidents will happen, and other people were to blame.

Perhaps that is really the Problem: who was responsible for the heroine's past? Was it her father? She does not say so--not in so many words.That is not her way.It is not for her, the silently-suffering victim of complicated antecedent incidents, to purchase justice for herself by pointing the finger of accusation against him who, whatever his faults may be, was once, at all events, her father.

That one fact in his favour she can never forget.Indeed she would not if she could.That one asset, for whatever it may be worth by the time the Day of Judgment arrives, he shall retain.It shall not be taken from him."After all he was my father." She admits it, with the accent on the "was." That he is so no longer, he has only himself to blame.His subsequent behaviour has apparently rendered it necessary for her to sever the relationship.

"I love you," she has probably said to him, paraphrasing Othello's speech to Cassio; "it is my duty, and--as by this time you must be aware--it is my keen if occasionally somewhat involved, sense of duty that is the cause of almost all our troubles in this play.You will always remain the object of what I cannot help feeling is misplaced affection on my part, mingled with contempt.But never more be relative of mine."Certain it is that but for her father she would never have had a past.Failing anyone else on whom to lay the blame for whatever the lady may have done, we can generally fall back upon the father.He becomes our sheet-anchor, so to speak.There are plays in which at first sight it would almost appear there was nobody to blame--nobody, except the heroine herself.It all seems to happen just because she is no better than she ought to be: clearly, the father's fault! for ever having had a daughter no better than she ought to be.As the Heroine of a certain Problem Play once put it neatly and succinctly to the old man himself: "It is you parents that make us children what we are." She had him there.He had not a word to answer for himself, but went off centre, leaving his hat behind him.

Sometimes, however, the father is merely a "Scientist"--which in Stageland is another term for helpless imbecile.In Stageland, if a gentleman has not got to have much brain and you do not know what else to make of him, you let him be a scientist--and then, of course, he is only to blame in a minor degree.If he had not been a scientist--thinking more of his silly old stars or beetles than of his intricate daughter, he might have done something.The heroine does not say precisely what: perhaps have taken her up stairs now and again, while she was still young and susceptible of improvement, and have spanked some sense into her.

[The Stage Hero who, for once, had Justice done to him.]

I remember witnessing long ago, in a country barn, a highly moral play.It was a Problem Play, now I come to think of it.At least, that is, it would have been a Problem Play but that the party with the past happened in this case to be merely a male thing.Stage life presents no problems to the man.The hero of the Problem Play has not got to wonder what to do; he has got to wonder only what the heroine will do next.The hero--he was not exactly the hero; he would have been the hero had he not been hanged in the last act.But for that he was rather a nice young man, full of sentiment and not ashamed of it.From the scaffold he pleaded for leave to embrace his mother just once more before he died.It was a pretty idea.The hangman himself was touched.The necessary leave was granted him.

He descended the steps and flung his arms round the sobbing old lady, and--bit off her nose.After that he told her why he had bitten off her nose.It appeared that when he was a boy, he had returned home one evening with a rabbit in his pocket.Instead of putting him across her knee, and working into him the eighth commandment, she had said nothing; but that it seemed to be a fairly useful sort of rabbit, and had sent him out into the garden to pick onions.If she had done her duty by him then, he would not have been now in his present most unsatisfactory position, and she would still have had her nose.The fathers and mothers in the audience applauded, but the children, scenting addition to precedent, looked glum.

Maybe it is something of this kind the heroine is hinting at.

Perhaps the Problem has nothing to do with the heroine herself, but with the heroine's parents: what is the best way of bringing up a daughter who shows the slightest sign of developing a tendency towards a Past? Can it be done by kindness? And, if not, how much?

Occasionally the parents attempt to solve the Problem, so far as they are concerned, by dying young--shortly after the heroine's birth.No doubt they argue to themselves this is their only chance of avoiding future blame.But they do not get out of it so easily.

"Ah, if I had only had a mother--or even a father!" cries the heroine: one feels how mean it was of them to slip away as they did.

The fact remains, however, that they are dead.One despises them for dying, but beyond that it is difficult to hold them personally responsible for the heroine's subsequent misdeeds.The argument takes to itself new shape.Is it Fate that is to blame? The lady herself would seem to favour this suggestion.It has always been her fate, she explains, to bring suffering and misery upon those she loves.At first, according to her own account, she rebelled against this cruel Fate--possibly instigated thereto by the people unfortunate enough to he loved by her.But of late she has come to accept this strange destiny of hers with touching resignation.It grieves her, when she thinks of it, that she is unable to imbue those she loves with her own patient spirit.They seem to be a fretful little band.