TANNER.
Everybody would call me a brute if I told Ann the truth about herself in terms of her own moral code.
To begin with, Ann says things that are not strictly true.
MRS WHITEFIELD.
I'm glad somebody sees she is not an angel.
TANNER.
In short—to put it as a husband would put it when exasperated to the point of speaking out—she is a liar.
And since she has plunged Tavy head over ears in love with her without any intention of marrying him, she is a coquette, according to the standard definition of a coquette as a woman who rouses passions she has no intention of gratifying.
And as she has now reduced you to the point of being willing to sacrifice me at the altar for the mere satisfaction of getting me to call her a liar to her face, I may conclude that she is a bully as well.
She can't bully men as she bullies women; so she habitually and unscrupulously uses her personal fascination to make men give her whatever she wants.
That makes her almost something for which I know no polite name.
MRS WHITEFIELD. [in mild expostulation] Well, you can't expect perfection, Jack.
TANNER.
I don't.
But what annoys me is that Ann does.
I know perfectly well that all this about her being a liar and a bully and a coquette and so forth is a trumped-up moral indictment which might be brought against anybody.
We all lie; we all bully as much as we dare; we all bid for admiration without the least intention of earning it; we all get as much rent as we can out of our powers of fascination.
If Ann would admit this I shouldn't quarrel with her.
But she won't.
If she has children she'll take advantage of their telling lies to amuse herself by whacking them.
If another woman makes eyes at me, she'll refuse to know a coquette.
She will do just what she likes herself whilst insisting on everybody else doing what the conventional code prescribes.
In short, I can stand everything except her confounded hypocrisy.
That's what beats me.
MRS WHITEFIELD. [carried away by the relief of hearing her own opinion so eloquently expressed] Oh, she is a hypocrite.
She is: she is. Isn't she?
TANNER.
Then why do you want to marry me to her?
MRS WHITEFIELD. [querulously] There now! put it on me, of course.
I never thought of it until Tavy told me she said I did.
But, you know, I'm very fond of Tavy: he's a sort of son to me; and I don't want him to be trampled on and made wretched.
TANNER.
Whereas I don't matter, I suppose.
MRS WHITEFIELD.
Oh, you are different, somehow: you are able to take care of yourself.
You'd serve her out.
And anyhow, she must marry somebody.
TANNER.
Aha! there speaks the life instinct.
You detest her; but you feel that you must get her married.
MRS WHITEFIELD. [rising, shocked] Do you mean that I detest my own daughter!
Surely you don't believe me to be so wicked and unnatural as that, merely because I see her faults.
TANNER. [cynically] You love her, then?
MRS WHITEFIELD.
Why, of course I do.
What queer things you say, Jack!
We can't help loving our own blood relations.
TANNER.
Well, perhaps it saves unpleasantness to say so.
But for my part, I suspect that the tables of consanguinity have a natural basis in a natural repugnance [he rises].