The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith Part 11

AGNES. More than you credit, Duke. For example, I--I think it possible you may not succeed in grinning away the compact between Mr. Cleeve and myself?

ST. OLPHERTS. Compact?

AGNES. Between serious man and woman.

ST. OLPHERTS. Serious woman.

AGNES. Ah! At least you must see that--serious woman. [Rising, facing him.] You can't fail to realise, even from this slight personal knowledge of me, that you are not dealing just now with some poor, feeble ballet-girl.

ST. OLPHERTS. But how well you put it! [Rising.] And how frank of you to furnish, as it were, a plan of the fortifications to the--the--

AGNES. Why do you stick at "enemy"?

ST. OLPHERTS. It's not the word. Opponent! For the moment, perhaps, opponent. I am never an enemy, I hope, where your s.e.x is concerned.

AGNES. No, I am aware that you are not over-nice in the bestowal of your patronage--where my s.e.x is concerned.

ST. OLPHERTS. You regard my appearance in an affair of morals as a quaint one?

AGNES. Your Grace is beginning to know me.

ST. OLPHERTS. Dear lady, you take pride, I hear, in belonging to--The People. You would delight me amazingly by giving me an inkling of the popular notion of my career.

AGNES. [Walking away.] Excuse me.

ST. OLPHERTS. [Following her.] Please! It would be instructive, perhaps chastening. I entreat.

AGNES. No.

ST OLPHERTS. You are letting sentiment intrude itself. [Sitting, in pain.] I challenge you.

AGNES. At Eton you were curiously precocious. The head-master, referring to your apt.i.tude with books, prophesied a brilliant future for you; your tutor, alarmed by your attachment to a certain cottage at Ascot which was minus a host, thanked his stars to be rid of you. At Oxford you closed all books, except, of course, betting-books.

ST. OLPHERTS. I detected the tendency of the age--scholars.h.i.+p for the ma.s.ses. I considered it my turn to be merely intuitively intelligent.

AGNES. You left Oxford a gambler and a spendthrift. A year or two in town established you as an amiable, undisguised debauchee. The rest is modern history.

ST. OLPHERTS. Complete your sketch. Don't stop at the--rude outline.

AGNES. Your affairs falling into disorder, you promptly married a wealthy woman--the poor, rich lady who has for some years honoured you by being your d.u.c.h.ess at a distance. This burlesque of a marriage helped to rea.s.sure your friends, and actually obtained for you an ornamental appointment for which an over-taxed nation provides a handsome stipend. But, to sum up, you must always remain an irritating source of uneasiness to your own order, as, luckily, you will always be a sharp-edged weapon in the hands of mine.

ST. OLPHERTS. [With a polite smile.] Yours! Ah, to that small, unruly section to which I understand you particularly attach yourself. To the--

AGNES. [With changed manner, flas.h.i.+ng eyes, harsh voice, and violent gestures.] The sufferers, the toilers; that great crowd of old and young--old and young stamped by excessive labour and privation all of one pattern--whose backs bend under burdens, whose bones ache and grow awry, whose skins, in youth and in age, are wrinkled and yellow; those from whom a fair share of the earth's s.p.a.ce and of the light of day is withheld. [Looking down at him fiercely.] The half-starved who are bidden to stand with their feet in the kennel to watch gay processions in which you and your kind are borne high. Those who would strip the robes from a dummy aristocracy and cast the broken dolls into the limbo of a nation's discarded toys. Those who--mark me!--are already upon the highway, marching, marching; whose time is coming as surely as yours is going!

ST. OLPHERTS. [Clapping his hands gently.] Bravo! Bravo! Really a flash of the old fire. Admirable! [She walks away to the window with an impatient exclamation.] Your present affaire du coeur does not wholly absorb you, then, Mrs. Ebbsmith. Even now the murmurings of love have not entirely superseded the thunderous denunciations of--h'm--You once bore a nickname, my dear.

AGNES. [Turning sharply.] Ho! So you've heard that, have you?

ST. OLPHERTS. Oh, yes.

AGNES. Mad--Agnes? [He bows deprecatingly.] We appear to have studied each other's history pretty closely.

ST. OLPHERTS. Dear lady, this is not the first time the same roof has covered us.

AGNES. No?

ST. OLPHERTS. Five years ago, on a broiling night in July, I joined a party of men who made an excursion from a club-house in St James's Street to the unsavoury district of St. Luke's.

AGNES. Oh, yes.

ST. OLPHERTS. A depressin' building; the Iron Hall, Barker Street--no--Carter Street.

AGNES. Precisely.

ST. OLPHERTS. We took our places amongst a handful of frowsy folks who cracked nuts and blasphemed. On the platform stood a gaunt, white-faced young lady resolutely engaged in making up by extravagance of gesture for the deficiencies of an exhausted voice. "There," said one of my companions, "that is the notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith." Upon which a person near us, whom I judged from his air of leaden laziness to be a British working man, blurted out, "Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith! Mad Agnes! That's the name her sanguinary friends give her--Mad Agnes!" At that moment the eye of the panting oratress caught mine for an instant, and you and I first met.

AGNES. [Pa.s.sing her hand across her brow, thoughtfully.]

Mad--Agnes . . . [To him, with a grim smile.] We have both been criticised, in our time, pretty sharply, eh, Duke?

ST. OLPHERTS. Yes. Let that reflection make you more charitable to a poor peer. [A knock at the door.]

AGNES. Entrez!

[FORTUNE and ANTONIO enter, ANTONIO carrying tea, &c., upon a tray.]

AGNES. [To ST. OLPHERTS.] You drink tea--fellow sufferer? [He signifies a.s.sent. FORTUNE places the tray on the table, then withdraws with ANTONIO. AGNES pours out tea.]

ST. OLPHERTS. [Producing a little box from his waistcoat pocket.] No milk, dear lady. And may I be allowed--saccharine? [She hands him his cup of tea; their eyes meet.]

AGNES. [Scornfully.] Tell me now--really--why do the Cleeves send a rip like you to do their serious work?

ST. OLPHERTS. [Laughing heartily.] Ha, ha, ha! Rip! ha, ha! Poor solemn family! Oh, set a thief to catch a thief, you know. That, I presume, is their motive.

AGNES. [Pausing in the act of pouring out, and staring at him.] What do you mean?

ST OLPHERTS. [Sipping his tea.] Set a thief to catch a thief. And by deduction, set one sensualist--who, after all, doesn't take the trouble to deceive himself--to rescue another who does.

AGNES. If I understand you, that is an insinuation against Mr. Cleeve.

ST. OLPHERTS. Insinuation!--

AGNES. [Looking at him fixedly.] Make yourself clearer.

ST. OLPHERTS. You have accused me, Mrs. Ebbsmith, of narrowness of outlook. In the present instance, dear lady, it is your judgement which is at fault.

AGNES. Mine?