of the room, with a cigar box, ash pans, and a portable electric reading lamp almost snowed up in heaps of papers and books. This table has knee holes and chairs right and left and is very untidy. The clerk’s desk, closed and tidy, with its high stool, is against the wall, near a door communicating with the inner rooms. In the opposite wall is the door leading to the public corridor. Its upper panel is of opaque glass, lettered in black on the outside, Fraser and Warren. A baize screen hides the corner between this door and the window.]
Frank, in a fashionable light-colored coaching suit, with his stick, gloves, and white hat in his hands, is pacing up and down in the office. Somebody tries the door with a key.
FRANK. [Calling.] Come in. It’s not locked. [Vivie comes in, in her hat and jacket. She stops and stares at him.]
VIVIE. [Sternly.] What are you doing here?
FRANK. Waiting to see you. I’ve been here for hours. Is this the way you attend to your business? [He puts his hat and stick on the table, and perches himself with a vault on the clerk’s stool, looking at her with every appearance of being in a specially restless, teasing, flippant mood.]
VIVIE. I’ve been away exactly twenty minutes for a cup of tea. [She takes off her hat and jacket and hangs them behind the screen.] How did you get in?
FRANK. The staff had not left when I arrived. He’s gone to play cricket on Primrose Hill. Why don’t you employ a woman, and give your sex a chance?
VIVIE. What have you come for?
FRANK. [Springing off the stool and coming close to her.] Viv: lets go and enjoy the Saturday half-holiday somewhere, like the staff. What do you say to Richmond, and then a music hall, and a jolly supper?
VIVIE. Can’t afford it. I shall put in another six hours work before I go to bed.
FRANK. Can’t afford it, can’t we? Aha! Look here. [He takes out a handful of sovereigns and makes them chink.] Gold, Viv: gold!
VIVIE. Where did you get it?
FRANK. Gambling, Viv: gambling. Poker.
VIVIE. Pah! It’s meaner than stealing it. No: I’m not coming. [She sits down to work at the table, with her back to the glass door, and begins turning over the papers.]
FRANK. [Remonstrating piteously.] But, my dear Viv, I want to talk to you ever so seriously.
VIVIE. Very well: sit down in Honoria’s chair and talk here. I like ten minutes chat after tea. [He murmurs.] No use groaning: I’m inexorable. [He takes the opposite seat disconsolately.] Pass that cigar box, will you?
FRANK. [Pushing the cigar box across.] Nasty womanly habit. Nice men don’t do it any longer.
VIVIE. Yes: they object to the smell in the office; and we’ve had to take to cigarets. See! [She opens the box and takes out a cigaret, which she lights. She offers him one; but he shakes his head with a wry face. She settles herself comfortably in her chair, smoking.] Go ahead.
FRANK. Well, I want to know what you’ve done—what arrangements you’ve made.
VIVIE. Everything was settled twenty minutes after I arrived here. Honoria has found the business too much for her this year; and she was on the point of sending for me and proposing a partnership when I walked in and told her I hadn’t a farthing in the world. So I installed myself and packed her off for a fortnight’s holiday. What happened at Haslemere when I left?
FRANK. Nothing at all. I said you’d gone to town on particular business.
VIVIE. Well?
FRANK. Well, either they were too flabbergasted to say anything, or else Crofts had prepared your mother. Anyhow, she didn’t say anything; and Crofts didn’t say anything; and Praddy only stared. After tea they got up and went; and I’ve not seen them since.
VIVIE. [Nodding placidly with one eye on a wreath of smoke.] That’s all right.
FRANK. [Looking round disparagingly.] Do you intend to stick in this confounded place?
VIVIE. [Blowing the wreath decisively away, and sitting straight up.] Yes. These two days have given me back all my strength and self-possession. I will never take a holiday again as long as I live.
FRANK. [With a very wry face.] Mps! You look quite happy. And as hard as nails.
VIVIE. [Grimly.] Well for me that I am!
FRANK. [Rising.] Look here, Viv: we must have an explanation. We parted the other day under a complete misunderstanding. [He sits on the table, close to her.]
VIVIE. [Putting away the cigaret.] Well: clear it up.
FRANK. You remember what Crofts said.
VIVIE. Yes.
FRANK. That revelation was supposed to bring about a complete change in the nature of our feeling for one another. It placed us on the footing of brother and sister.
VIVIE. Yes.
FRANK. Have you ever had a brother?
VIVIE. No.
FRANK. Then you don’t know what being brother and sister feels like? Now I have lots of sisters; and the fraternal feeling is quite familiar to me. I assure you my feeling for you is not the least in the world like it. The girls will go their way; I will go mine; and we shan’t care if we never see one another again. That’s brother and sister. But as to you, I can’t be easy if I have to pass a week without seeing you. That’s not brother and sister. Its exactly what I felt an hour before Crofts made his revelation. In short, dear Viv, it’s love’s young dream.
VIVIE. [Bitingly.] The same feeling, Frank, that brought your father to my mother’s feet. Is that it?
FRANK. [So revolted that he slips off the table for a moment.] I very strongly object, Viv, to have my feelings compared to any which the Reverend Samuel is capable of harboring; and I object still more to a comparison of you to your mother. [Resuming his perch.] Besides, I don’t believe the story. I have taxed my father with it, and obtained from him what I consider tantamount to a denial.
VIVIE. What did he say?
FRANK. He said he was sure there must be some mistake.
VIVIE. Do you believe him?
FRANK. I am prepared to take his word against Crofts’.
VIVIE. Does it make any difference? I mean in your imagination or conscience; for of course it makes no real difference.
FRANK. [Shaking his head.] None whatever to me.
VIVIE. Nor to me.
FRANK. [Staring.] But this is ever so surprising! [He goes back to his chair.] I thought our whole relations were altered in your imagination and conscience, as you put it, the moment those words were out of that brute’s muzzle.
VIVIE. No: it was not that. I didn’t believe him. I only wish I could.
FRANK. Eh?
VIVIE. I think brother and sister would be a very suitable relation for us.
FRANK. You really mean that?
VIVIE. Yes. It’s the only relation I care for, even if we could afford any other. I mean that.
FRANK. [Raising his eyebrows like one on whom a new light has dawned, and rising with quite an effusion of chivalrous sentiment.] My dear Viv: why didn’t you say so before? I am ever so sorry for persecuting you. I understand, of course.
VIVIE. [Puzzled.] Understand what?
FRANK. Oh, I’m not a fool in the ordinary sense: only in the Scriptural sense of doing all the things the wise man declared to be folly, after trying them himself on the most extensive scale. I see I am no longer Vivvums’s little boy. Don’t be alarmed: I shall never call you Vivvums again—at least unless you get tired of your new little boy, whoever he may be.
VIVIE. My new little boy!
FRANK.