takes it up and looks at envelope.] What a curious
handwriting!
It reminds me of the
handwriting of a woman I used to know years
ago.
MRS. ALLONBY. Who?
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Oh! no one. No one in particular. A woman of
no importance. [Throws letter down, and passes up the steps of the
terrace with MRS. ALLONBY. They smile at each other.]
ACT DROP.
SECOND ACT
SCENE
Drawing-room at Hunstanton, after dinner, lamps lit. Door L.C.
Door R.C.
[Ladies seated on sofas.]
MRS. ALLONBY. What a comfort it is to have got rid of the men for
a little!
LADY STUTFIELD. Yes; men
persecute us
dreadfully, don't they?
MRS. ALLONBY. Persecute us? I wish they did.
LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear!
MRS. ALLONBY. The
annoying thing is that the wretches can be
perfectly happy without us. That is why I think it is every
woman's duty never to leave them alone for a single moment, except
during this short breathing space after dinner; without which I
believe we poor women would be
absolutely" target="_blank" title="ad.绝对地;确实">
absolutely worn to shadows.
[Enter Servants with coffee.]
LADY HUNSTANTON. Worn to shadows, dear?
MRS. ALLONBY. Yes, Lady Hunstanton. It is such a
strain keeping
men up to the mark. They are always
trying to escape from us.
LADY STUTFIELD. It seems to me that it is we who are always
tryingto escape from them. Men are so very, very heartless. They know
their power and use it.
LADY CAROLINE. [Takes coffee from Servant.] What stuff and
nonsense all this about men is! The thing to do is to keep men in
their proper place.
MRS. ALLONBY. But what is their proper place, Lady Caroline?
LADY CAROLINE. Looking after their wives, Mrs. Allonby.
MRS. ALLONBY. [Takes coffee from Servant.] Really? And if
they're not married?
LADY CAROLINE. If they are not married, they should be looking
after a wife. It's
perfectly scandalous the
amount of bachelors
who are going about society. There should be a law passed to
compel them all to marry within twelve months.
LADY STUTFIELD. [Refuses coffee.] But if they're in love with
some one who, perhaps, is tied to another?
LADY CAROLINE. In that case, Lady Stutfield, they should be
married off in a week to some plain
respectable girl, in order to
teach them not to
meddle with other people's property.
MRS. ALLONBY. I don't think that we should ever be
spoken of as
other people's property. All men are married women's property.
That is the only true
definition of what married women's property
really is. But we don't belong to any one.
LADY STUTFIELD. Oh, I am so very, very glad to hear you say so.
LADY HUNSTANTON. But do you really think, dear Caroline, that
legislation would improve matters in any way? I am told that,
nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the
bachelors like married men.
MRS. ALLONBY. I certainly never know one from the other.
LADY STUTFIELD. Oh, I think one can always know at once whether a
man has home claims upon his life or not. I have noticed a very,
very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men.
MRS. ALLONBY. Ah, all that I have noticed is that they are
horriblytedious when they are good husbands, and abominably
conceited when they are not.
LADY HUNSTANTON. Well, I suppose the type of husband has
completely changed since my young days, but I'm bound to state that
poor dear Hunstanton was the most
delightful of creatures, and as
good as gold.
MRS. ALLONBY. Ah, my husband is a sort of promissory note; I'm
tired of meeting him.
LADY CAROLINE. But you renew him from time to time, don't you?
MRS. ALLONBY. Oh no, Lady Caroline. I have only had one husband
as yet. I suppose you look upon me as quite an amateur.
LADY CAROLINE. With your views on life I wonder you married at
all.
MRS. ALLONBY. So do I.
LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear child, I believe you are really very
happy in your married life, but that you like to hide your
happiness from others.
MRS. ALLONBY. I assure you I was
horribly deceived in Ernest.
LADY HUNSTANTON. Oh, I hope not, dear. I knew his mother quite
well. She was a Stratton, Caroline, one of Lord Crowland's
daughters
LADY CAROLINE. Victoria Stratton? I remember her
perfectly. A
silly fair-haired woman with no chin.
MRS. ALLONBY. Ah, Ernest has a chin. He has a very strong chin, a
square chin. Ernest's chin is far too square.
LADY STUTFIELD. But do you really think a man's chin can be too
square? I think a man should look very, very strong, and that his
chin should be quite, quite square.
MRS. ALLONBY. Then you should certainly know Ernest, Lady
Stutfield. It is only fair to tell you
beforehand he has got no
conversation at all.
LADY STUTFIELD. I adore silent men.
MRS. ALLONBY. Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time.
But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know.
I haven't listened to him for years.
LADY STUTFIELD. Have you never
forgiven" target="_blank" title="
forgive的过去分词">
forgiven him then? How sad that
seems! But all life is very, very sad, is it not?
MRS. ALLONBY. Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a MAUVAIS QUART
D'HEURE made up of
exquisite moments.
LADY STUTFIELD. Yes, there are moments, certainly. But was it
something very, very wrong that Mr. Allonby did? Did he become
angry with you, and say anything that was
unkind or true?
MRS. ALLONBY. Oh dear, no. Ernest is
invariably calm. That is
one of the reasons he always gets on my nerves. Nothing is so
aggravating as
calmness. There is something
positively brutal
about the good
temper of most modern men. I wonder we women stand
it as well as we do.
LADY STUTFIELD. Yes; men's good
temper shows they are not so
sensitive as we are, not so
finely strung. It makes a great
barrier often between husband and wife, does it not? But I would
so much like to know what was the wrong thing Mr. Allonby did.
MRS. ALLONBY. Well, I will tell you, if you
solemnly promise to
tell everybody else.
LADY STUTFIELD. Thank you, thank you. I will make a point of
repeating it.
MRS. ALLONBY. When Ernest and I were engaged, he swore to me
positively on his knees that he had never loved any one before in
the whole course of his life. I was very young at the time, so I
didn't believe him, I needn't tell you. Unfortunately, however, I
made no enquiries of any kind till after I had been actually
married four or five months. I found out then that what he had
told me was
perfectly true. And that sort of thing makes a man so
absolutely" target="_blank" title="ad.绝对地;确实">
absolutely uninteresting.
LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear!
MRS. ALLONBY. Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is
their
clumsyvanity. We women have a more subtle
instinct about
things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.
LADY STUTFIELD. I see what you mean. It's very, very beautiful.
LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear child, you don't mean to tell me that you
won't
forgive your husband because he never loved any one else?
Did you ever hear such a thing, Caroline? I am quite surprised.
LADY CAROLINE. Oh, women have become so highly educated, Jane,
that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages.
They
apparently are getting
remarkably rare.
MRS. ALLONBY. Oh, they're quite out of date.
LADY STUTFIELD. Except
amongst the middle classes, I have been
told.
MRS. ALLONBY. How like the middle classes!
LADY STUTFIELD. Yes - is it not? - very, very like them.
LADY CAROLINE. If what you tell us about the middle classes is
true, Lady Stutfield, it redounds greatly to their credit. It is
much to be regretted that in our rank of life the wife should be so
persistently
frivolous, under the
impressionapparently that it is
the proper thing to be. It is to that I
attribute the unhappiness
of so many marriages we all know of in society.
MRS. ALLONBY. Do you know, Lady Caroline, I don't think the
frivolity of the wife has ever anything to do with it. More
marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband
than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy
with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a
perfectlyrational being?
LADY HUNSTANTON. My dear!
MRS. ALLONBY. Man, poor,
awkward,
reliable, necessary man belongs
to a sex that has been
rational for millions and millions of years.
He can't help himself. It is in his race. The History of Woman is
very different. We have always been
picturesque protests against
the mere
existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the
first.
LADY STUTFIELD. Yes, the common sense of husbands is certainly
most, most
trying. Do tell me your
conception of the Ideal
Husband. I think it would be so very, very helpful.
MRS. ALLONBY. The Ideal Husband? There couldn't be such a thing.
The
institution is wrong.
LADY STUTFIELD. The Ideal Man, then, in his relations to US.
LADY CAROLINE. He would probably be
extremely realistic.
MRS. CAROLINE. The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us
as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He
should refuse all our serious requests, and
gratify every one of
our whims. He should
encourage us to have caprices, and
forbid us
to have missions. He should always say much more than he means,
and always mean much more than he says.
LADY HUNSTANTON. But how could he do both, dear?
MRS. ALLONBY. He should never run down other pretty women. That
would show he had no taste, or make one
suspect that he had too
much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow
they don't attract him.
LADY STUTFIELD. Yes, that is always very, very pleasant to hear
about other women.
MRS. ALLONBY. If we ask him a question about anything, he should
give us an answer all about ourselves. He should
invariably praise
us for
whatever qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should
be
pitiless, quite
pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that
we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that
we know the use of useful things. That would be un
forgiveable.
But he should
shower on us everything we don't want.
LADY CAROLINE. As far as I can see, he is to do nothing but pay
bills and compliments.
MRS. ALLONBY. He should persistently
compromise us in public, and
treat us with
absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he
should be always ready to have a
perfectly terrible scene, whenever
we want one, and to become
miserable,
absolutely" target="_blank" title="ad.绝对地;确实">
absolutelymiserable, at a
moment's notice, and to
overwhelm us with just reproaches in less
than twenty minutes, and to be
positivelyviolent at the end of
half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when
we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has
seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back
the little things he has given one, and promised never to
communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he
should be
perfectly broken-hearted, and
telegraph to one all day
long, and send one little notes every
half-hour by a private
hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should