NEWTE [he rises. Kindly but firmly he puts her back into her chair. Then pacing to and fro with his hands mostly in his trousers pockets, he talks]. Now, you listen to me, old girl. I’ve been your business manager ever since you started in. I’ve never made a mistake before—[he turns and faces her]—and I haven’t made one this time.
FANNY. I don’t really see the smartness, George, stuffing him up with a lot of lies he can find out for himself.
NEWTE. If he wants to. A couple of telegrams, one to His Grace the Bishop of Waiapu, the other to Judge Denis O’Gorman, Columbus, Ohio, would have brought him back the information that neither gentlemen had ever heard of you. If he hadn’t been careful not to send them. He wasn’t marrying you with the idea of strengthening his family connections. He was marrying you because he was just gone on you. Couldn’t help himself.
FANNY. In that case, you might just as well have told him the truth.
NEWTE. Which he would then have had to pass on to everyone entitled to ask questions. Can’t you understand? Somebody, in the interest of everybody, had to tell a lie. Well, what’s a business manager for?
FANNY. But I can’t do it, George. You don’t know them. The longer I give in to them the worse they’ll get.
NEWTE. Can’t you square them?
FANNY. No, that’s the trouble. They are honest. They’re the “faithful retainers” out of a melodrama. They are working eighteen hours a day on me not for any advantage to themselves, but because they think it their “duty” to the family. They don’t seem to have any use for themselves at all.
NEWTE. Well, what about the boy? Can’t he talk to them?
FANNY. Vernon! They’ve brought him up from a baby—spanked him all round, I expect. Might as well ask a boy to talk to his old schoolmaster. Besides, if he did talk, then it would all come out. As I tell you, it’s bound to come out—and the sooner the better.