t is, it
would have been a Problem Play but that the party with the past happened
in this case to be merely a male thing. Stage life presents no problems
to the man. The hero of the Problem Play has not got to wonder what to
do; he has got to wonder only what the heroine will do next. The hero--he
was not exactly the hero; he would have been the hero had he not been
hanged in the last act. But for that he was rather a nice young man,
full of sentiment and not ashamed of it. From the scaffold he pleaded
for leave to embrace his mother just once more before he died. It was a
pretty idea. The hangman himself was touched. The necessary leave was
granted him. He descended the steps and flung his arms round the sobbing
old lady, and--bit off her nose. After that he told her why he had
bitten off her nose. It appeared that when he was a boy, he had returned
home one evening with a rabbit in his pocket. Instead of putting him
across her knee, and working into him the eighth commandment, she had
said nothing; but that it seemed to be a fairly useful sort of rabbit,
and had sent him out into the garden to pick onions. If she had done her
duty by him then, he would not have been now in his present most
unsatisfactory position, and she would still have had her nose. The
fathers and mothers in the audience applauded, but the children, scenting
addition to precedent, looked glum.

Maybe it is something of this kind the heroine is hinting at. Perhaps
the Problem has nothing to do with the heroine herself, but with the
heroine's parents: what is the best way of bringing up a daughter who
shows the slightest sign of developing a tendency towards a Past? Can it
be done by kindness? And, if not, how much?

Occasionally the parents attempt to solve the Problem, so far as they are
concerned, by dying young--shortly after the heroine's birth. No doubt
they argue to themselves this is their only chance of avoiding future
blame. But they do not get out of it so easily.

"Ah, if I had only had a mother--or even a father!" cries the heroine:
one feels how mean it was of them to slip away as they did.

The fact remains, however, that they are dead. One despises them for
dying, but beyond that it is difficult to hold them personally
responsible for the heroine's subsequent misdeeds. The argument takes to
itself new shape. Is it Fate that is to blame? The lady herself would
seem to favour this suggestion. It has always be