Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 6

KATE. And a moral man, and chatty, and quite the philanthropist.

SIR HARRY. [_On sure ground._] All women envied you.

KATE. How you loved me to be envied.

SIR HARRY. I swaddled you in luxury.

KATE. [_Making her great revelation._] That was it.

SIR HARRY. [_Blankly._] What?

KATE. [_Who can be serene because it is all over._] How you beamed at me when I sat at the head of your fat dinners in my fat jewelry, surrounded by our fat friends.

SIR HARRY. [_Aggrieved._] They weren't so fat.

KATE. [_A side issue._] All except those who were so thin. Have you ever noticed, Harry, that many jewels make women either incredibly fat or incredibly thin?

SIR HARRY. [_Shouting._] I have not. [_Is it worth while to argue with her any longer?_] We had all the most interesting society of the day. It wasn't only business men. There were politicians, painters, writers----

KATE. Only the glorious, dazzling successes. Oh, the fat talk while we ate too much--about who had made a hit and who was slipping back, and what the noo house cost and the noo motor and the gold soup-plates, and who was to be the noo knight.

SIR HARRY. [_Who it will be observed is unanswerable from first to last._] Was anybody getting on better than me, and consequently you?

KATE. Consequently me! Oh, Harry, you and your sublime religion.

SIR HARRY. [_Honest heart._] My religion? I never was one to talk about religion, but----

KATE. Pooh, Harry, you don't even know what your religion was and is and will be till the day of your expensive funeral. [_And here is the lesson that life has taught her._] One's religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is Success.

SIR HARRY. [_Quoting from his morning paper._] Ambition--it is the last infirmity of n.o.ble minds.

KATE. n.o.ble minds!

SIR HARRY. [_At last grasping what she is talking about._] You are not saying that you left me because of my success?

KATE. Yes, that was it. [_And now she stands revealed to him._] I couldn't endure it. If a failure had come now and then--but your success was suffocating me. [_She is rigid with emotion._] The pa.s.sionate craving I had to be done with it, to find myself among people who had not got on.

SIR HARRY. [_With proper spirit._] There are plenty of them.

KATE. There were none in our set. When they began to go down-hill they rolled out of our sight.

SIR HARRY. [_Clenching it._] I tell you I am worth a quarter of a million.

KATE [_Unabashed._] That is what you are worth to yourself. I'll tell you what you are worth to me: exactly twelve pounds. For I made up my mind that I could launch myself on the world alone if I first proved my mettle by earning twelve pounds; and as soon as I had earned it I left you.

SIR HARRY. [_In the scales._] Twelve pounds!

KATE. That is your value to a woman. If she can't make it she has to stick to you.

SIR HARRY. [_Remembering perhaps a rectory garden._] You valued me at more than that when you married me.

KATE. [_Seeing it also._] Ah, I didn't know you then. If only you had been a man, Harry.

SIR HARRY. A man? What do you mean by a man?

KATE. [_Leaving the garden._] Haven't you heard of them? They are something fine; and every woman is loath to admit to herself that her husband is not one. When she marries, even though she has been a very trivial person, there is in her some vague stirring toward a worthy life, as well as a fear of her capacity for evil. She knows her chance lies in him. If there is something good in him, what is good in her finds it, and they join forces against the baser parts. So I didn't give you up willingly, Harry. I invented all sorts of theories to explain you. Your hardness--I said it was a fine want of mawkishness. Your coa.r.s.eness--I said it goes with strength. Your contempt for the weak--I called it virility. Your want of ideals was clear-sightedness. Your ign.o.ble views of women--I tried to think them funny. Oh, I clung to you to save myself. But I had to let go; you had only the one quality, Harry, success; you had it so strong that it swallowed all the others.

SIR HARRY. [_Not to be diverted from the main issue._] How did you earn that twelve pounds?

KATE. It took me nearly six months; but I earned it fairly. [_She presses her hand on the typewriter as lovingly as many a woman has pressed a rose._] I learned this. I hired it and taught myself. I got some work through a friend, and with my first twelve pounds I paid for my machine. Then I considered that I was free to go, and I went.

SIR HARRY. All this going on in my house while you were living in the lap of luxury! [_She nods._] By G.o.d, you were determined.

KATE. [_Briefly._] By G.o.d, I was.

SIR HARRY. [_Staring._] How you must have hated me.

KATE. [_Smiling at the childish word._] Not a bit--after I saw that there was a way out. From that hour you amused me, Harry; I was even sorry for you, for I saw that you couldn't help yourself. Success is just a fatal gift.

SIR HARRY. Oh, thank you.

KATE. [_Thinking, dear friends in front, of you and me perhaps._] Yes, and some of your most successful friends knew it. One or two of them used to look very sad at times, as if they thought they might have come to something if they hadn't got on.

SIR HARRY. [_Who has a horror of sacrilege._] The battered crew you live among now--what are they but folk who have tried to succeed and failed?

KATE. That's it; they try, but they fail.

SIR HARRY. And always will fail.

KATE. Always. Poor souls--I say of them. Poor soul--they say of me. It keeps us human. That is why I never tire of them.

SIR HARRY. [_Comprehensively._] Bah! Kate, I tell you I'll be worth half a million yet.

KATE. I'm sure you will. You're getting stout, Harry.

SIR HARRY. No, I'm not.

KATE. What was the name of that fat old fellow who used to fall asleep at our dinner-parties?

SIR HARRY. If you mean Sir William Crackley----

KATE. That was the man. Sir William was to me a perfect picture of the grand success. He had got on so well that he was very, very stout, and when he sat on a chair it was thus [_her hands meeting in front of her_]--as if he were holding his success together. That is what you are working for, Harry. You will have that and the half million about the same time.

SIR HARRY. [_Who has surely been very patient._] Will you please to leave my house?

KATE. [_Putting on her gloves, soiled things._] But don't let us part in anger. How do you think I am looking, Harry, compared to the dull, inert thing that used to roll round in your padded carriages?

SIR HARRY. [_In masterly fas.h.i.+on._] I forget what you were like. I'm very sure you never could have held a candle to the present Lady Sims.