Well, I think you might at least drop them until we are out of mourning.
ANN. [reproachfully, stricken to the soul] Oh, how could you remind me, mother? [She hastily leaves the room to conceal her emotion].
MRS WHITEFIELD.
Of course. My fault as usual! [She follows Ann].
TANNER. [coming from the bockcase] Ramsden: we're beaten—smashed—nonentitized, like her mother.
RAMSDEN.
Stuff, Sir. [He follows Mrs Whitefield out of the room].
TANNER. [left alone with Octavius, stares whimsically at him] Tavy: do you want to count for something in the world?
OCTAVIUS.
I want to count for something as a poet: I want to write a great play.
TANNER.
With Ann as the heroine?
OCTAVIUS.
Yes: I confess it.
TANNER.
Take care, Tavy.
The play with Ann as the heroine is all right; but if you're not very careful, by Heaven she'll marry you.
OCTAVIUS. [sighing] No such luck, Jack!
TANNER.
Why, man, your head is in the lioness's mouth: you are half swallowed already—in three bites—Bite One, Ricky; Bite Two, Ticky; Bite Three, Tavy; and down you go.
OCTAVIUS.
She is the same to everybody, Jack: you know her ways.
TANNER.
Yes: she breaks everybody's back with the stroke of her paw; but the question is, which of us will she eat?
My own opinion is that she means to eat you.
OCTAVIUS. [rising, pettishly] It's horrible to talk like that about her when she is upstairs crying for her father.
But I do so want her to eat me that I can bear your brutalities because they give me hope.
TANNER.
Tavy; that's the devilish side of a woman's fascination: she makes you will your own destruction.
OCTAVIUS.
But it's not destruction: it's fulfilment.
TANNER.
Yes, of HER purpose; and that purpose is neither her happiness nor yours, but Nature's.
Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of creation.
She sacrifices herself to it: do you think she will hesitate to sacrifice you?
OCTAVIUS.
Why, it is just because she is self-sacrificing that she will not sacrifice those she loves.
TANNER.
That is the profoundest of mistakes, Tavy.
It is the self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most recklessly.
Because they are unselfish, they are kind in little things.
Because they have a purpose which is not their own purpose, but that of the whole universe, a man is nothing to them but an instrument of that purpose.
OCTAVIUS.
Don't be ungenerous, Jack.
They take the tenderest care of us.
TANNER.
Yes, as a soldier takes care of his rifle or a musician of his violin.
But do they allow us any purpose or freedom of our own?
Will they lend us to one another?
Can the strongest man escape from them when once he is appropriated?