An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde [free ebook reader TXT] 📗

promised to look in at

the Hartlocks’. I believe they have got a mauve Hungarian band that

plays mauve Hungarian music. See you soon. Good-bye!

 

[Exit]

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. How beautiful you look to-night, Gertrude!

 

LADY CHILTERN. Robert, it is not true, is it? You are not going to

lend your support to this Argentine speculation? You couldn’t!

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Starting.] Who told you I intended to do so?

 

LADY CHILTERN. That woman who has just gone out, Mrs. Cheveley, as

she calls herself now. She seemed to taunt me with it. Robert, I

know this woman. You don’t. We were at school together. She was

untruthful, dishonest, an evil influence on every one whose trust or

friendship she could win. I hated, I despised her. She stole

things, she was a thief. She was sent away for being a thief. Why

do you let her influence you?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Gertrude, what you tell me may be true, but it

happened many years ago. It is best forgotten! Mrs. Cheveley may

have changed since then. No one should be entirely judged by their

past.

 

LADY CHILTERN. [Sadly.] One’s past is what one is. It is the only

way by which people should be judged.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. That is a hard saying, Gertrude!

 

LADY CHILTERN. It is a true saying, Robert. And what did she mean

by boasting that she had got you to lend your support, your name, to

a thing I have heard you describe as the most dishonest and

fraudulent scheme there has ever been in political life?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Biting his lip.] I was mistaken in the view I

took. We all may make mistakes.

 

LADY CHILTERN. But you told me yesterday that you had received the

report from the Commission, and that it entirely condemned the whole

thing.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Walking up and down.] I have reasons now to

believe that the Commission was prejudiced, or, at any rate,

misinformed. Besides, Gertrude, public and private life are

different things. They have different laws, and move on different

lines.

 

LADY CHILTERN. They should both represent man at his highest. I see

no difference between them.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Stopping.] In the present case, on a matter

of practical politics, I have changed my mind. That is all.

 

LADY CHILTERN. All!

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Sternly.] Yes!

 

LADY CHILTERN. Robert! Oh! it is horrible that I should have to ask

you such a question - Robert, are you telling me the whole truth?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Why do you ask me such a question?

 

LADY CHILTERN. [After a pause.] Why do you not answer it?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Sitting down.] Gertrude, truth is a very

complex thing, and politics is a very complex business. There are

wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to people

that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life one has to

compromise. Every one does.

 

LADY CHILTERN. Compromise? Robert, why do you talk so differently

to-night from the way I have always heard you talk? Why are you

changed?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. I am not changed. But circumstances alter

things.

 

LADY CHILTERN. Circumstances should never alter principles!

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. But if I told you -

 

LADY CHILTERN. What?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. That it was necessary, vitally necessary?

 

LADY CHILTERN. It can never be necessary to do what is not

honourable. Or if it be necessary, then what is it that I have

loved! But it is not, Robert; tell me it is not. Why should it be?

What gain would you get ? Money? We have no need of that! And

money that comes from a tainted source is a degradation. Power? But

power is nothing in itself. It is power to do good that is fine -

that, and that only. What is it, then? Robert, tell me why you are

going to do this dishonourable thing!

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Gertrude, you have no right to use that word.

I told you it was a question of rational compromise. It is no more

than that.

 

LADY CHILTERN. Robert, that is all very well for other men, for men

who treat life simply as a sordid speculation; but not for you,

Robert, not for you. You are different. All your life you have

stood apart from others. You have never let the world soil you. To

the world, as to myself, you have been an ideal always. Oh! be that

ideal still. That great inheritance throw not away - that tower of

ivory do not destroy. Robert, men can love what is beneath them -

things unworthy, stained, dishonoured. We women worship when we

love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. Oh! don’t

kill my love for you, don’t kill that!

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Gertrude!

 

LADY CHILTERN. I know that there are men with horrible secrets in

their lives - men who have done some shameful thing, and who in some

critical moment have to pay for it, by doing some other act of shame

- oh! don’t tell me you are such as they are! Robert, is there in

your life any secret dishonour or disgrace? Tell me, tell me at

once, that -

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. That what?

 

LADY CHILTERN. [Speaking very slowly.] That our lives may drift

apart.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Drift apart?

 

LADY CHILTERN. That they may be entirely separate. It would be

better for us both.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Gertrude, there is nothing in my past life that

you might not know.

 

LADY CHILTERN. I was sure of it, Robert, I was sure of it. But why

did you say those dreadful things, things so unlike your real self?

Don’t let us ever talk about the subject again. You will write,

won’t you, to Mrs. Cheveley, and tell her that you cannot support

this scandalous scheme of hers? If you have given her any promise

you must take it back, that is all!

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Must I write and tell her that?

 

LADY CHILTERN. Surely, Robert! What else is there to do?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. I might see her personally. It would be

better.

 

LADY CHILTERN. You must never see her again, Robert. She is not a

woman you should ever speak to. She is not worthy to talk to a man

like you. No; you must write to her at once, now, this moment, and

let your letter show her that your decision is quite irrevocable!

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Write this moment!

 

LADY CHILTERN. Yes.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. But it is so late. It is close on twelve.

 

LADY CHILTERN. That makes no matter. She must know at once that she

has been mistaken in you - and that you are not a man to do anything

base or underhand or dishonourable. Write here, Robert. Write that

you decline to support this scheme of hers, as you hold it to be a

dishonest scheme. Yes - write the word dishonest. She knows what

that word means. [SIR ROBERT CHILTERN sits down and writes a letter.

His wife takes it up and reads it.] Yes; that will do. [Rings

bell.] And now the envelope. [He writes the envelope slowly. Enter

MASON.] Have this letter sent at once to Claridge’s Hotel. There is

no answer. [Exit MASON. LADY CHILTERN kneels down beside her

husband, and puts her arms around him.] Robert, love gives one an

instinct to things. I feel to-night that I have saved you from

something that might have been a danger to you, from something that

might have made men honour you less than they do. I don’t think you

realise sufficiently, Robert, that you have brought into the

political life of our time a nobler atmosphere, a finer attitude

towards life, a freer air of purer aims and higher ideals - I know

it, and for that I love you, Robert.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Oh, love me always, Gertrude, love me always!

 

LADY CHILTERN. I will love you always, because you will always be

worthy of love. We needs must love the highest when we see it!

[Kisses him and rises and goes out.]

 

[SIR ROBERT CHILTERN walks up and down for a moment; then sits down

and buries his face in his hands. The Servant enters and begins

pulling out the lights. SIR ROBERT CHILTERN looks up.]

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Put out the lights, Mason, put out the lights!

 

[The Servant puts out the lights. The room becomes almost dark. The

only light there is comes from the great chandelier that hangs over

the staircase and illumines the tapestry of the Triumph of Love.]

ACT DROP SECOND ACT SCENE

Morning-room at Sir Robert Chiltern’s house.

 

[LORD GORING, dressed in the height of fashion, is lounging in an

armchair. SIR ROBERT CHILTERN is standing in front of the fireplace.

He is evidently in a state of great mental excitement and distress.

As the scene progresses he paces nervously up and down the room.]

 

LORD GORING. My dear Robert, it’s a very awkward business, very

awkward indeed. You should have told your wife the whole thing.

Secrets from other people’s wives are a necessary luxury in modern

life. So, at least, I am always told at the club by people who are

bald enough to know better. But no man should have a secret from his

own wife. She invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful

instinct about things. They can discover everything except the

obvious.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Arthur, I couldn’t tell my wife. When could I

have told her? Not last night. It would have made a lifelong

separation between us, and I would have lost the love of the one

woman in the world I worship, of the only woman who has ever stirred

love within me. Last night it would have been quite impossible. She

would have turned from me in horror … in horror and in contempt.

 

LORD GORING. Is Lady Chiltern as perfect as all that?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Yes; my wife is as perfect as all that.

 

LORD GORING. [Taking off his left-hand glove.] What a pity! I beg

your pardon, my dear fellow, I didn’t quite mean that. But if what

you tell me is true, I should like to have a serious talk about life

with Lady Chiltern.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. It would be quite useless.

 

LORD GORING. May I try?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Yes; but nothing could make her alter her

views.

 

LORD GORING. Well, at the worst it would simply be a psychological

experiment.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. All such experiments are terribly dangerous.

 

LORD GORING. Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn’t

so, life wouldn’t be worth living… . Well, I am bound to say that

I think you should have told her years ago.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. When? When we were engaged? Do you think she

would have married me if she had known that the origin of my fortune

is such as it is, the basis of my career such as it is, and that I

had done a thing that I suppose most men would call shameful and

dishonourable?

 

LORD GORING. [Slowly.] Yes; most men would call it ugly names.

There is no doubt of that.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Bitterly.] Men who every day do something of

the same kind themselves. Men who, each one of them, have worse

secrets in their own lives.

 

LORD GORING. That is the reason they are so pleased to find out

other people’s secrets. It distracts public attention from their

own.