The Silver Box by John Galsworthy Read Free Book Online Page A

have to swear to?
     
    SNOW. That's best known to yourself, sir. [Retreating to the door.] Better employ a solicitor, sir, in case anything should arise. We shall have the butler to prove the loss of the article. You'll excuse me going, I 'm rather pressed to-night. The case may come on any time after eleven. Good evening, sir; good evening, ma'am. I shall have to produce the box in court to-morrow, so if you'll excuse me, sir, I may as well take it with me.
     
    [He takes the silver box and leaves them with a little bow.] [BARTHWICK makes a move to follow him, then dashing his hands beneath his coat tails, speaks with desperation.]
     
    BARTHWICK. I do wish you'd leave me to manage things myself. You will put your nose into matters you know nothing of. A pretty mess you've made of this!
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. [Coldly.] I don't in the least know what you're talking about. If you can't stand up for your rights, I can. I 've no patience with your principles, it's such nonsense.
     
    BARTHWICK. Principles! Good Heavens! What have principles to do with it for goodness sake? Don't you know that Jack was drunk last night!
     
    JACK. Dad!
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. [In horror rising.] Jack!
     
    JACK. Look here, Mother—I had supper. Everybody does. I mean to say—you know what I mean—it's absurd to call it being drunk. At Oxford everybody gets a bit "on" sometimes—
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. Well, I think it's most dreadful! If that is really what you do at Oxford?
     
    JACK. [Angrily.] Well, why did you send me there? One must do as other fellows do. It's such nonsense, I mean, to call it being drunk. Of course I 'm awfully sorry. I've had such a beastly headache all day.
     
    BARTHWICK. Tcha! If you'd only had the common decency to remember what happened when you came in. Then we should know what truth there was in what this fellow says—as it is, it's all the most confounded darkness.
     
    JACK. [Staring as though at half-formed visions.] I just get a— and then—it's gone—
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. Oh, Jack! do you mean to say you were so tipsy you can't even remember—
     
    JACK. Look here, Mother! Of course I remember I came—I must have come—
     
    BARTHWICK. [Unguardedly, and walking up and down.] Tcha!—and that infernal purse! Good Heavens! It'll get into the papers. Who on earth could have foreseen a thing like this? Better to have lost a dozen cigarette-boxes, and said nothing about it. [To his wife.] It's all your doing. I told you so from the first. I wish to goodness Roper would come!
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. [Sharply.] I don't know what you're talking about, John.
     
    BARTHWICK. [Turning on her.] No, you—you—you don't know anything! [Sharply.] Where the devil is Roper? If he can see a way out of this he's a better man than I take him for. I defy any one to see a way out of it. I can't.
     
    JACK. Look here, don't excite Dad—I can simply say I was too beastly tired, and don't remember anything except that I came in and [in a dying voice] went to bed the same as usual.
     
    BARTHWICK. Went to bed? Who knows where you went—I've lost all confidence. For all I know you slept on the floor.
     
    JACK. [Indignantly.] I didn't, I slept on the—
     
    BARTHWICK. [Sitting on the sofa.] Who cares where you slept; what does it matter if he mentions the—the—a perfect disgrace?
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. What? [A silence.] I insist on knowing.
     
    JACK. Oh! nothing.
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. Nothing? What do you mean by nothing, Jack? There's your father in such a state about it!
     
    JACK. It's only my purse.
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. Your purse! You know perfectly well you haven't got one.
     
    JACK. Well, it was somebody else's—it was all a joke—I didn't want the beastly thing.
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. Do you mean that you had another person's purse, and that this man took it too?
     
    BARTHWICK. Tcha! Of course he took it too! A man like that Jones will make the most of it. It'll get into the papers.
     
    MRS. BARTHWICK. I don't