Five Little Plays Part 14

LADY TORMINSTER. Yes.

SIR GEOFFREY. Calm, serene, untroubled, with the conscience of a babe--one, two, three, he sleeps. He and I have had some rare times together. I've been roped to him on the Andes--he shot a tiger that was about to scrunch me--I rubbed his nose when it was frost-bitten. He saved my life--I saved his nose. I always maintain that the balance of grat.i.tude is on his side--for where would he have been without his nose?

LADY TORMINSTER. You _are_ absurd.

SIR GEOFFREY. Would you have married him without a nose?

LADY TORMINSTER. I might have.

SIR GEOFFREY. Now you know you wouldn't. You'd have been afraid of what people would say. And what would he have done when he became short-sighted, and had to wear gla.s.ses?

LADY TORMINSTER. My cigarette has gone out.

SIR GEOFFREY. [_Jumping up and handing her the box._] Take another. Never re-light a cigarette--it's like dragging up the past. Here.

LADY TORMINSTER. I said only one.

SIR GEOFFREY. This is not the hour for inflexibility. The Medes and Persians have all gone to bed.

[_She takes the cigarette; he lights it for her._

LADY TORMINSTER. Tell me why you mean to leave us. And remember--I shan't let _this_ one go out.

SIR GEOFFREY. My explanation will be handed to you with your cup of tea in the morning.

LADY TORMINSTER. And you will be gone?

SIR GEOFFREY. I shall be gone. There is a train at 7.45--which will be packed with husbands. I shall breakfast in town.

LADY TORMINSTER. Why?

SIR GEOFFREY. Well, one must breakfast somewhere. It's a convention.

LADY TORMINSTER. Sir Geoffrey, I want you to tell me what this means.

SIR GEOFFREY. Give your decision, said the judge to the arbitrator, but never your reasons. I go, because I go. Besides, has one reasons? Why do people die, or get married, or buy umbrellas? Because of typhoid, love, or the rain? Not at all. Isn't that so?

LADY TORMINSTER. I wish you'd be serious.

SIR GEOFFREY. I'm fearfully serious. When Jack shot that tiger he had to go so near the brute that he held his life in his hands. Do you know what was my chief impression as I lay there, with the ugly cat's paw upon my chest, beginning to rip me?

LADY TORMINSTER. [_Shuddering._] Horrible! What?

SIR GEOFFREY. I resented his having eaten something that smelt like onions.

LADY TORMINSTER. [_Smiling._] A tiger!

SIR GEOFFREY. Onions may have been his undoing. That's the beggar's skin on the floor. But you should have seen me rub Jack's nose!

LADY TORMINSTER. [_Warningly._] Sir Geoffrey, there's very little cigarette left--

SIR GEOFFREY. There are lots more in the box--and dawn is a long way off.

Hang it, Lady Torminster, don't be in a hurry! Do you hear the sea out there? It's breathing as regularly as old Jack. And don't you think this is fine? Here we are, we two, meeting just as we shall meet on the other side of the Never-Never Land. It's a chance for a man to speak to a woman, and tell her things.

LADY TORMINSTER. What things!

SIR GEOFFREY. That's just it--what things? What have I to say, after all?

I am going to-morrow because I am a fantastic, capricious a.s.s. Also because I'm lonely.

LADY TORMINSTER. How will China help you?

SIR GEOFFREY. They colour it green on the map--and there _is_ such a lot of it!

LADY TORMINSTER. You should get married.

SIR GEOFFREY. [_With a sudden burst of pa.s.sion._] _You_ say that--you!

[_He starts back, ashamed, and hangs his head._ LADY TORMINSTER _throws a quick glance at him, then looks ahead of her, puffing quietly at her cigarette._

LADY TORMINSTER. [_Quietly._] So that is why you are going?

SIR GEOFFREY. [_With a great sigh of relief._] Now, that really is fine of you! Every other woman in the world would have seized that chance for a melodramatic exit. "Good-night, Sir Geoffrey; I must go to my husband."

"Good-night, Lady Torminster." A clasp of the hand--a hot tear--mine--on your wrist. But you sit there. Splendid!

LADY TORMINSTER. I ask you again--is that truly why you are going?

SIR GEOFFREY. Well, yes, that's the fact. I apologise humbly--it's so conventional. Isn't it?

LADY TORMINSTER. I suppose it's difficult for human beings to invent new situations.

SIR GEOFFREY. You've known it, of course, all the time; you've known it ever since Jack brought me to you, the day after you were engaged. And that's nine years ago. It's the usual kind of fatality.

LADY TORMINSTER. These things happen.

SIR GEOFFREY. Yes. Well, I thought I was cured. I've been here five days, and I find I am not. So I go. That's best, isn't it?

LADY TORMINSTER. Yes.

SIR GEOFFREY. It's so infernally stupid. You're a beautiful woman, of course; but there are heaps of beautiful women. You've qualities--well, so have other women, too. I'm only forty-one--and, as you say, why don't I marry? Simply because of you. Because you've an uncomfortable knack of intruding between me and the other lady.

LADY TORMINSTER. That is a great misfortune.

SIR GEOFFREY. It's most annoying. So I shall try China. I shall come back in two years--I shall be forty-three then--I shall come back, sound as a bell; and I shall marry some healthy, pink-cheeked young woman, take a house next to yours, and in the fulness of time your eldest son shall fall in love with my daughter.

LADY TORMINSTER. Why not?

SIR GEOFFREY. I shouldn't have told you, of course; but I'm glad that I have. It clears the air. Now what excuse shall I make?

LADY TORMINSTER. A wire from town?