Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (25 page)

MRS. ERLYNNE.  Lord Augustus!  Then it is I who am lost! 
[Hesitates for a moment, then looks round and sees door R., and exits through it.]

 [Enter LORD DARLINGTON, MR. DUMBY, LORD WINDERMERE, LORD AUGUSTUS LORTON, and MR. CECIL GRAHAM.

DUMBY.  What a nuisance their turning us out of the club at this hour!  It’s only two o’clock. 
[Sinks into a chair.]
  The lively part of the evening is only just beginning. 
[Yawns and closes his eyes.]

LORD WINDERMERE.  It is very good of you, Lord Darlington, allowing Augustus to force our company on you, but I’m afraid I can’t stay long.

LORD DARLINGTON.  Really!  I am so sorry!  You’ll take a cigar, won’t you?

LORD WINDERMERE.  Thanks! 
[Sits down.]

LORD AUGUSTUS. 
[To LORD WINDERMERE.]
  My dear boy, you must not dream of going.  I have a great deal to talk to you about, of demmed importance, too. 
[Sits down with him at L. table.]

CECIL GRAHAM.  Oh!  We all know what that is!  Tuppy can’t talk about anything but Mrs. Erlynne.

LORD WINDERMERE.  Well, that is no business of yours, is it, Cecil?

CECIL GRAHAM.  None!  That is why it interests me.  My own business always bores me to death.  I prefer other people’s.

LORD DARLINGTON.  Have something to drink, you fellows.  Cecil, you’ll have a whisky and soda?

CECIL GRAHAM.  Thanks. 
[Goes to table with LORD DARLINGTON.]
  Mrs. Erlynne looked very handsome to-night, didn’t she?

LORD DARLINGTON.  I am not one of her admirers.

CECIL GRAHAM.  I usen’t to be, but I am now.  Why! she actually made me introduce her to poor dear Aunt Caroline.  I believe she is going to lunch there.

LORD DARLINGTON. 
[In Purple.]
  No?

CECIL GRAHAM.  She is, really.

LORD DARLINGTON.  Excuse me, you fellows.  I’m going away to-morrow.  And I have to write a few letters. 
[Goes to writing table and sits down.]

DUMBY.  Clever woman, Mrs. Erlynne.

CECIL GRAHAM.  Hallo, Dumby!  I thought you were asleep.

DUMBY.  I am, I usually am!

LORD AUGUSTUS.  A very clever woman.  Knows perfectly well what a demmed fool I am - knows it as well as I do myself.

[CECIL GRAHAM comes towards him laughing.]

Ah, you may laugh, my boy, but it is a great thing to come across a woman who thoroughly understands one.

DUMBY.  It is an awfully dangerous thing.  They always end by marrying one.

CECIL GRAHAM.  But I thought, Tuppy, you were never going to see her again!  Yes! you told me so yesterday evening at the club.  You said you’d heard -

[Whispering to him.]

LORD AUGUSTUS.  Oh, she’s explained that.

CECIL GRAHAM.  And the Wiesbaden affair?

LORD AUGUSTUS.  She’s explained that too.

DUMBY.  And her income, Tuppy?  Has she explained that?

LORD AUGUSTUS. 
[In a very serious voice.]
  She’s going to explain that to-morrow.

[CECIL GRAHAM goes back to C. table.]

DUMBY.  Awfully commercial, women nowadays.  Our grandmothers threw their caps over the mills, of course, but, by Jove, their granddaughters only throw their caps over mills that can raise the wind for them.

LORD AUGUSTUS.  You want to make her out a wicked woman.  She is not!

CECIL GRAHAM.  Oh!  Wicked women bother one.  Good women bore one.  That is the only difference between them.

LORD AUGUSTUS. 
[Puffing a cigar.]
  Mrs. Erlynne has a future before her.

DUMBY.  Mrs. Erlynne has a past before her.

LORD AUGUSTUS.  I prefer women with a past.  They’re always so demmed amusing to talk to.

CECIL GRAHAM.  Well, you’ll have lots of topics of conversation with
her
, Tuppy. 
[Rising and going to him.]

LORD AUGUSTUS.  You’re getting annoying, dear-boy; you’re getting demmed annoying.

CECIL GRAHAM. 
[Puts his hands on his shoulders.]
  Now, Tuppy, you’ve lost your figure and you’ve lost your character.  Don’t lose your temper; you have only got one.

LORD AUGUSTUS.  My dear boy, if I wasn’t the most good-natured man in London -

CECIL GRAHAM.  We’d treat you with more respect, wouldn’t we, Tuppy? 
[Strolls away.]

DUMBY.  The youth of the present day are quite monstrous.  They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair. 
[LORD AUGUSTUS looks round angrily.]

CECIL GRAHAM.  Mrs. Erlynne has a very great respect for dear Tuppy.

DUMBY.  Then Mrs. Erlynne sets an admirable example to the rest of her sex.  It is perfectly brutal the way most women nowadays behave to men who are not their husbands.

LORD WINDERMERE.  Dumby, you are ridiculous, and Cecil, you let your tongue run away with you.  You must leave Mrs. Erlynne alone.  You don’t really know anything about her, and you’re always talking scandal against her.

CECIL GRAHAM. 
[Coming towards him L.C.]
  My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. 
I
only talk gossip.

LORD WINDERMERE.  What is the difference between scandal and gossip?

CECIL GRAHAM.  Oh! gossip is charming!  History is merely gossip.  But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.  Now, I never moralise.  A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.  There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience.  And most women know it, I’m glad to say.

LORD AUGUSTUS.  Just my sentiments, dear boy, just my sentiments.

CECIL GRAHAM.  Sorry to hear it, Tuppy; whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.

LORD AUGUSTUS.  My dear boy, when I was your age -

CECIL GRAHAM.  But you never were, Tuppy, and you never will be. 
[Goes up C.]
  I say, Darlington, let us have some cards.  You’ll play, Arthur, won’t you?

LORD WINDERMERE.  No, thanks, Cecil.

DUMBY. 
[With a sigh.]
  Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man!  It’s as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

CECIL GRAHAM.  You’ll play, of course, Tuppy?

LORD AUGUSTUS. 
[Pouring himself out a brandy and soda at table.]
  Can’t, dear boy.  Promised Mrs. Erlynne never to play or drink again.

CECIL GRAHAM.  Now, my dear Tuppy, don’t be led astray into the paths of virtue.  Reformed, you would be perfectly tedious.  That is the worst of women.  They always want one to be good.  And if we are good, when they meet us, they don’t love us at all.  They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.

LORD DARLINGTON. 
[Rising from R. table, where he has been writing letters.]
  They always do find us bad!

DUMBY.  I don’t think we are bad.  I think we are all good, except Tuppy.

LORD DARLINGTON.  No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. 
[Sits down at C. table.]

DUMBY.  We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars?  Upon my word, you are very romantic to-night, Darlington.

CECIL GRAHAM.  Too romantic!  You must be in love.  Who is the girl?

LORD DARLINGTON.  The woman I love is not free, or thinks she isn’t. 
[Glances instinctively at LORD WINDERMERE while he speaks.]

CECIL GRAHAM.  A married woman, then!  Well, there’s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman.  It’s a thing no married man knows anything about.

LORD DARLINGTON.  Oh! she doesn’t love me.  She is a good woman.  She is the only good woman I have ever met in my life.

CECIL GRAHAM.  The only good woman you have ever met in your life?

LORD DARLINGTON.  Yes!

CECIL GRAHAM. 
[Lighting a cigarette.]
  Well, you are a lucky fellow!  Why, I have met hundreds of good women.  I never seem to meet any but good women.  The world is perfectly packed with good women.  To know them is a middle-class education.

LORD DARLINGTON.  This woman has purity and innocence.  She has everything we men have lost.

CECIL GRAHAM.  My dear fellow, what on earth should we men do going about with purity and innocence?  A carefully thought-out buttonhole is much more effective.

DUMBY.  She doesn’t really love you then?

LORD DARLINGTON.  No, she does not!

DUMBY.  I congratulate you, my dear fellow.  In this world there are only two tragedies.  One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.  The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy!  But I am interested to hear she does not love you.  How long could you love a woman who didn’t love you, Cecil?

CECIL GRAHAM.  A woman who didn’t love me?  Oh, all my life!

DUMBY.  So could I.  But it’s so difficult to meet one.

LORD DARLINGTON.  How can you be so conceited, DUMBY?

DUMBY.  I didn’t say it as a matter of conceit.  I said it as a matter of regret.  I have been wildly, madly adored.  I am sorry I have.  It has been an immense nuisance.  I should like to be allowed a little time to myself now and then.

LORD AUGUSTUS. 
[Looking round.]
  Time to educate yourself, I suppose.

DUMBY.  No, time to forget all I have learned.  That is much more important, dear Tuppy. 
[LORD AUGUSTUS moves uneasily in his chair.]

LORD DARLINGTON.  What cynics you fellows are!

CECIL GRAHAM.  What is a cynic? 
[Sitting on the back of the sofa.]

LORD DARLINGTON.  A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

CECIL GRAHAM.  And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

LORD DARLINGTON.  You always amuse me, Cecil.  You talk as if you were a man of experience.

CECIL GRAHAM.  I am. 
[Moves up to front off fireplace.]

LORD DARLINGTON.  You are far too young!

CECIL GRAHAM.  That is a great error.  Experience is a question of instinct about life.  I have got it.  Tuppy hasn’t.  Experience is the name Tuppy gives to his mistakes.  That is all. 
[LORD AUGUSTUS looks round indignantly.]

DUMBY.  Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

CECIL GRAHAM. 
[Standing with his back to the fireplace.]
  One shouldn’t commit any. 
[Sees LADY WINDERMERE’S fan on sofa.]

DUMBY.  Life would be very dull without them.

CECIL GRAHAM.  Of course you are quite faithful to this woman you are in love with, Darlington, to this good woman?

LORD DARLINGTON.  Cecil, if on really loves a woman, all other women in the world become absolutely meaningless to one.  Love changes one -
I
am changed.

CECIL GRAHAM.  Dear me!  How very interesting!  Tuppy, I want to talk to you. 
[LORD AUGUSTUS takes no notice.]

DUMBY.  It’s no use talking to Tuppy.  You might just as well talk to a brick wall.

CECIL GRAHAM.  But I like talking to a brick wall - it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!  Tuppy!

LORD AUGUSTUS.  Well, what is it?  What is it? 
[Rising and going over to CECIL GRAHAM.]