BOSSBORN. Well, what is the matter today? Why have you sent for me?
SERAFINA. I want to have it out with you about my Thursday at-homes. You have stopped coming to them. Why?
BOSSBORN. Have I? Well, you see, I am full up of business all day. I have my own business to attend to all the forenoon, and in the afternoon there are board meetings of directors and the County Council, and appointments of all sorts. Much as I like to turn up at your at-homes for the pleasure of seeing you I simply cannot find time for society and small talk. I am, unfortunately, a very busy man.
SERAFINA. How charmingly you pay out that budget of lies! A busy man can always find time to do anything he really wants to do, and excuses for everything he doesnt.
BOSSBORN. That is true. Ive not thought about it. To be quite frank, I dislike the society of ladies and gentlemen. They bore me. I am not at home among them. You know I am only an upstart tramp.
SERAFINA. Very clever. But a much bigger lie. I dont know where you get your courtly manners and the way you speak and carry your London clothes; but I know you are a cut above me socially, and look down on the poor provincials and tradespeople.
BOSSBORN. Well, suppose it is so. Let us assume that I was brought up as a court page, and was so bored by it that I broke loose from it, threw myself on the streets penniless just as Kropotkin when he grew out of being Tsar Alexander's page, chose an infantry regiment in Siberia instead of the Imperial Guards at the top of the tree in Pietersburg. Such things happened. You may pretend that it happened to me. But if so does not this prove that I am not a snob?
SERAFINA. At last you may be telling the truth. But if you are not a snob why have you stopped coming to my at-homes? Answer me that.
BOSSBORN. Whats the use of answering if you will not believe a word I say? You seem to know the truth, whatever it may be. It is for you to tell it to me.
SERAFINA. The reason you have stoppe coming to them is that you think I want to marry you.
BOSSBORN. Oh, nonsense!
SERAFINA. It is not nonsense. Do stop lying. It would be a social promotion for me. My old nurse, with her talk about your being a very nice gentleman, selected you for my husband from the time she first saw you. Everybody thinks I ought to get married before I am too old. If you came always to my at-homes they would think you are the man. That is what you are afraid of. you need not be afraid. I have sent for you to tell you that nothing on earth could induce me to marry you. So there. You can come as often as you like. I have no designs on you.
BOSSBORN. But have I offended you in any way? Are my manners inconsiderate?
SERAFINA. No. you rmanners are perfect.
BOSSBORN. You just dont like me. Simply natural antipathy, eh?
SERAFINA. Not in the least. I like you and admire you more than any man I have ever known. You are a wonder.
BOSSBORN. Then why?
SERAFINA. I am afraid of you.
BOSSBORN. Afraid of me!!! Impossible. How? Why? Are you serious?
SERAFINA. Yes: afraid of you. Everybody is afraid of you.
BOSSBORN. Is there any use in saying that you have no reason to be afraid of me?
SERAFINA. Yes I have. I like to be mistress in my own house, as I was in Four Towers.
BOSSBORN. But you would be mistress in my house if we were married.
SERAFINA. No one will ever be mistress in any house that you are in. Only your slaves and your bedfellow.
BOSSBORN. This bewilders me. Have I ever forced you to do anything that you did not want to?
SERAFINA. No; for I always had to do what you wanted me to do. I was happy at Four Towers: I loved it: I was born there and mistress of it and of myself: it was sacred to me. I turned you out of it for daring to say a word against it. Where is it now? And where am I? Just where you put me: I might as well have been a piece of furniture. Here in this house of your choosing and your building I have heard my four towers being blown up, bang, bang, bang, bang, striking on my heart like an earthquake; and I never lifted my finger to stop you as I could have done if I had been my own mistress. At the works, where my grandfather always had the last word until he died, you came; and with Jaspers and Smith and all the rest against you, you turned the whole place inside out: poor old Smith and his clerks had to retire; Jasper had to knuckle under; our splendid old craftsman had to learn new machines or be sacked and replaced by American mechanics.
BOSSBORN. Yes, yes, yes; but they consented: they were willing. I doubled, trebled, quadrupled the product and profit. You could not live in the Four Towers now because you are so enormously more comfortable and civilized here. You can all do far more as you like with the leisure my reforms give you than you could before I came. Leisure is the only reality of freedom. I coerce nobody: I only point out the way.
SERAFINA. You: your way, not our way.
BOSSBORN. Neither my way nor yours. The way of the world. Some people call it God's way.
SERAFINA. Anyhow I will live my own life, not yours. If I marry, my choice will not be a Bossborn.
BOSSBORN. Is that final?
SERAFINA. Yes. Friendship only.
BOSSBORN. So be it. Good day to you.