The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith Part 12

ST. OLPHERTS. It is not I who fall into the error of confounding you with the designing danseuse of commerce; it is, strangely enough, you who have failed in your estimate of Mr. Lucas Cleeve.

AGNES. What is my estimate?

ST. OLPHERTS. I pay you the compliment of believing that you have looked upon my nephew as a talented young gentleman whose future was seriously threatened by domestic disorder; a young man of a certain courage and independence, with a share of the brain and spirit of those terrible human pests called reformers; the one gentleman, in fact, most likely to aid you in advancing your vivacious social and political tenets. You have such thoughts in your mind?

AGNES. I can't deny it.

ST. OLPHERTS. Ah! But what is the real, the actual Lucas Cleeve?

AGNES. Well--what is the real Lucas Cleeve?

ST OLPHERTS. Poor dear fellow! I'll tell you. [Going to the table to deposit his cup there; while she watches him, her hand tightly clasped, a frightened look in her eyes.] The real Lucas Cleeve. [Coming back to her.] An egoist. An egoist.

AGNES. An egoist, Yes.

ST. OLPHERTS. Possessing ambition without patience, self-esteem without self-confidence.

AGNES. Well?

ST. OLPHERTS. Afflicted with a desperate craving for the opium-like drug, adulation; persistently seeking the society of those whose white, pink-tipped fingers fill the pernicious pipe most deftly and delicately. Eh?

AGNES. I didn't--Pray, go on.

ST. OLPHERTS. Ha! I remember they looked to his marriage to check his dangerous fancy for the flutter of lace, the purr of pretty women. And now, here, he is--loose again.

AGNES. [Suffering.] Oh!--

ST. OLPHERTS. In short, in intellect still nothing but a callow boy; in body, nervous, bloodless, hysterical; in morals--an epicure.

AGNES. Have done! Have done!

ST. OLPHERTS. "Epicure" offends you. A vain woman would find consolation in the word.

AGNES. Enough of it! Enough! Enough! [She turns away, beating her hands together. The light in the room has gradually become subdued; the warm tinge of sunset now colours the scene outside the window.]

ST. OLPHERTS. [With a shrug of his shoulders.] The real Lucas Cleeve.

AGNES. No, no! Untrue, untrue! [LUCAS enters. The three remain silent for a moment.] The Duke of St. Olpherts calls in answer to a letter I wrote to him yesterday. I wanted to make his acquaintance. [She goes out.]

LUCAS. [After a brief pause.] By a lucky accident the tables were crowded at Florian's; I might have missed the chance of welcoming you.

In G.o.d's name, Duke, why must you come here?

ST. OLPHERTS. [Fumbling in his pocket for a note.] In G.o.d's name? You bring the orthodoxy into this queer firm, then, Lucas? [Handing the note to LUCAS.] A peremptory summons.

LUCAS. You need not have obeyed it. [ST. OLPHERTS takes a cigarette from his case and limps away.] I looked about for you just now. I wanted to see you.

ST. OLPHERTS. How fortunate--

LUCAS. To tell you that this persecution must come to an end. It has made me desperately wretched for a whole week.

ST. OLPHERTS. Persecution?

LUCAS. Temptation.

ST. OLPHERTS. Dear Lucas, the process of inducing a man to return to his wife isn't generally described as temptation.

LUCAS. Ah, I won't hear another word of that proposal. [ST. OLPHERTS shrugs his shoulders.] I say my people are offering me, through you, a deliberate temptation to be a traitor. To which of these two women--my wife or--[pointing to the door]--to her--am I really bound now? It may be regrettable, scandalous, but the common rules of right and wrong have ceased to apply here. Finally, Duke--and this is my message--I intend to keep faith with the woman who sat by my bedside in Rome, the woman to whom I shouted my miserable story in my delirium, the woman whose calm, resolute voice healed me, hardened me, renewed in me the desire to live.

ST. OLPHERTS. Ah! Oh, these modern nurses, in their greys, or browns, and snowy bibs! They have much to answer for, dear Lucas.

LUCAS. No, no! Why will you persist, all of you, in regarding this as a mere morbid infatuation, bred in the fumes of pastilles? It isn't so!

Laugh, if you care to; but this is a meeting of affinities, of the solitary man and the truly sympathetic woman.

ST. OLPHERTS. And oh--oh these sympathetic women!

LUCAS. No! Oh, the unsympathetic women! There you have the cause of half the world's misery. The unsympathetic women--you should have loved one of them.

ST. OLPHERTS. I dare say I've done that in my time.

LUCAS. Love one of these women--I know!--wors.h.i.+p here, yield yourself to the intoxicating day-dreams that make the grimy world sweeter than any heaven ever imagined. How you heart leaps with grat.i.tude for your good fortune! How compa.s.sionately you regard your unblest fellow men!

What may you not accomplish with such a mate beside you; how high will be your aims, how paltry every obstacle that bars your way to them; how sweet is to be the labour, how divine the rest! Then--you marry her.

Marry her, and in six months, if you've pluck enough to do it, lag behind your shooting party and blow your brains out, by accident, at the edge of a turnip-field. You have found out by that time all that there is to look for--the daily diminis.h.i.+ng interest in your doings, the poorly a.s.sumed attention as you attempt to talk over some plan for the future; then the yawn, and by degrees, the covert sneer, the little sarcasm, and finally, the frank, open stare of boredom. Ah, Duke, when you all carry out your repressive legislation against women of evil lives, don't fail to include in your schedule the Unsympathetic Wives.

They are the women whose victims show the sorriest scars; they are the really "bad women" of the world: all the others are snow-white in comparison!

ST. OLPHERTS. Yes, you've got a good deal of this in that capital Essay you quoted from this morning. Dear fellow, I admit your home discomforts; but to jump out of the frying pan into this confounded-- what does she call it?--compact!

LUCAS. Compact?

ST. OLPHERTS. A vague reference, as I understand, to your joint crusade against the blessed inst.i.tution of Marriage.

LUCAS. [An alteration in his manner.] Oh--ho, that idea! What--what has she been saying to you?

ST. OLPHERTS. Incidentally she pitched into me, dear Lucas; she attacked my moral character. You must have been telling tales.

LUCAS. Oh, I--I hope not. Of course, we--

ST. OLPHERTS. Yes, yes--a little family gossip, to pa.s.s the time while she has been dressing her hair or--By the bye, she doesn't appear to spend much time in dressing her hair.

LUCAS. [Biting his lip.] Really?

ST. OLPHERTS. Then she denounced the gilded aristocracy generally. Our day is over; we're broken wooden dolls, and are going to be chucked.

The old tune; but I enjoyed the novelty of being so near the instrument. I a.s.sure you, dear fellow, I was within three feet of her when she deliberately Trafalgar Squared me.

LUCAS. [With an uneasy laugh.] You're the red rag, Duke. This spirit of revolt in her--it's ludicrously extravagant; but it will die out in time, when she has become used to being happy and cared for--[partly to himself, with clenched hands]--yes, cared for.

ST. OLPHERTS. Die out? Bred in the bone, dear Lucas.

LUCAS. On some topics she's a mere echo of her father, if you mean that?