Plays and Controversies

Abstract

A young man arrives at a little public-house and tells the publican’s daughter that he has murdered his father. He so tells the story that he wins all her sympathy, and every time he retells it, with fresh exaggerations and additions, he wins the sympathy of somebody or other, for it is the countryman’s habit to be against the law. The countryman thinks the greater the crime the greater the provocation must have been. The young man himself, under the excitement of his own story, becomes gay, energetic and lucky. He prospers in love, comes in first at the local races and bankrupts the roulette tables afterwards. Then the father arrives with his head bandaged but very lively, and the people turn upon the impostor. To recover their esteem he takes up a spade to kill his father in earnest, but horrified by the threat of what had sounded so well in the story, they bind him to hand over to the police. The father releases him and father and son walk off together, the son, still buoyed up by his imagination, announcing that he will be master henceforth.