The Importance of Being Earnest (11 page)

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. This afternoon? But I wanted so much to come and see you.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. How kind of you! But I am afraid I have to go.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Shall I never see you again, Mrs. Erlynne?

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. I am afraid not. Our lives lie too far apart. But this is a little thing I would like you to do for me. I want a photograph of you, Lady Windermere—would you give me one? You don’t know how gratified I should be.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Oh, with pleasure. There is one on that table. I’ll show it to you.
(Goes across to the table.)

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
.
(Coming up to Mrs. Erlynne and speaking in a low voice.)
It is monstrous your intruding yourself here after your conduct last night.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(With an amused smile.)
My dear Windermere, manners before morals!

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
.
(Returning.)
I’m afraid it is very flattering—I am not so pretty as that.
(Showing photograph.)

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. You are much prettier. But haven’t you got one of yourself with your little boy?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. I have. Would you prefer one of those?

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Yes.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. I’ll go and get it for you, if you’ll excuse me for a moment. I have one upstairs.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. So sorry, Lady Windermere, to give you so much trouble.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
.
(Moves to door R.)
No trouble at all, Mrs. Erlynne.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Thanks so much.

(Exit Lady Windermere R.)

You seem rather out of temper this morning, Windermere. Why should you be? Margaret and I get on charmingly together.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. I can’t bear to see you with her. Besides, you have not told me the truth, Mrs. Erlynne.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. I have not told
her
the truth, you mean.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
.
(Standing C.)
I sometimes wish you had. I should have been spared then the misery, the anxiety, the annoyance of the last six months. But rather than my wife should know—that the mother whom she was taught to consider as
dead, the mother whom she has mourned as dead, is living—a divorced woman, going about under an assumed name, a bad woman preying upon life, as I know you now to be—rather than that, I was ready to supply you with money to pay bill after bill, extravagance after extravagance, to risk what occurred yesterday, the first quarrel I have ever had with my wife. You don’t understand what that means to me. How could you? But I tell you that the only bitter words that ever came from those sweet lips of hers were on your account, and I hate to see you next her. You sully the innocence that is in her.
(Moves L.C.)
And then I used to think that with all your faults you were frank and honest. You are not.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Why do you say that?

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. You made me get you an invitation to my wife’s ball.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. For my daughter’s ball—yes.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. You came, and within an hour of your leaving the house you are found in a man’s rooms—you are disgraced before every one.
(Goes up stage C.)

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Yes.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
.
(Turning round on her.)
Therefore I have a right to look upon you as what you are—a worthless, vicious woman. I have the right to tell you never to enter this house, never to attempt to come near my wife——

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Coldly.)
My daughter, you mean.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. You have no right to claim her as your daughter. You left her, abandoned her when she was but a child in the cradle, abandoned her for your lover, who abandoned you in turn.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Rising.)
Do you count that to his credit, Lord Windermere—or to mine?

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. To his, now that I know you.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Take care—you had better be careful.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. Oh, I am not going to mince words for you. I know you thoroughly.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Looking steadily at him.)
I question that.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. I
do
know you. For twenty years of your life you lived without your child, without a thought of your child. One day you read in the papers that she had married a rich man. You saw your hideous chance. You knew that to spare her the ignominy of learning that a woman like you was her mother, I would endure anything. You began your blackmailing.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Shrugging her shoulders.)
Don’t use ugly words, Windermere. They are vulgar. I saw my chance, it is true, and took it.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. Yes, you took it—and spoiled it all last night by being found out.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(With a strange smile.)
You are quite right, I spoiled it all last night.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. And as for your blunder in taking my wife’s fan from here and then leaving it about in Darlington’s rooms, it is unpardonable. I can’t bear the sight of it now. I shall never let my wife use it again. The thing is soiled for me. You should have kept it and not brought it back.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. I think I
shall
keep it.
(Goes up.)
It’s extremely pretty.
(Takes up fan.)
I shall ask Margaret to give it to me.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. I hope my wife will give it to you.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Oh, I’m sure she will have no objection.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. I wish that at the same time she would give you a miniature she kisses every night before she prays—It’s the miniature of a young innocent-looking girl with beautiful dark hair.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Ah, yes, I remember. How long ago that seems!
(Goes to sofa and sits down.)
It was done before I was married. Dark hair and an innocent expression were the fashion then, Windermere!

(A pause.)

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. What do you mean by coming here this morning? What is your object?
(Crossing L.C. and sitting.)

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(With a note of irony in her voice.)
To bid good-bye to my dear daughter, of course.
(Lord Windermere bites his under lip in anger
.
MRS. ERLYNNE
looks at him, and her voice and manner become serious. In her accents as she talks there is a note of deep tragedy. For a
moment she reveals herself.)
Oh, don’t imagine I am going to have a pathetic scene with her, weep on her neck and tell her who I am, and all that kind of thing. I have no ambition to play the part of a mother. only once in my life have I known a mother’s feelings. That was last night. They were terrible—they made me suffer—they made me suffer too much. For twenty years, as you say, I have lived childless,—I want to live childless still.
(Hiding her feelings with a trivial laugh.)
Besides, my dear Windermere, how on earth could I pose as a mother with a grown-up daughter? Margaret is twenty-one, and I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not. So you see what difficulties it would involve. No, as far as I am concerned, let your wife cherish the memory of this dead, stainless mother. Why should I interfere with her illusions? I find it hard enough to keep my own. I lost one illusion last night. I thought I had no heart. I find I have, and a heart doesn’t suit me, Windermere. somehow it doesn’t go with modern dress. It makes one look old.
(Takes up hand-mirror from table and looks into it.)
And it spoils one’s career at critical moments.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. You fill me with horror—with absolute horror.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Rising.)
I suppose, Windermere, you would like me to retire into a convent or become a hospital nurse, or something of that kind, as people do in silly modern novels. That is stupid of you, Arthur; in real life we don’t do such things—not as long as we have any good looks left, at any rate. No—what consoles one now-a-days is not repentance, but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date. And besides, if a woman really repents, she has to go to a bad dressmaker, otherwise no one believes in her. And nothing in the world would induce me to do that. No; I am going to pass entirely out of your two lives. My coming into them has been a mistake—I discovered that last night.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. A fatal mistake.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Smiling.)
Almost fatal.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. I am sorry now I did not tell my wife the whole thing at once.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. I regret my bad actions. You regret your good ones—that is the difference between us.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. I don’t trust you. I
will
tell my wife. It’s better for her to know, and from me. It will cause her infinite pain—it will humiliate her terribly, but it’s right that she should know.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. You propose to tell her?

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. I am going to tell her.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Going up to him.)
If you do, I will make my name so infamous that it will mar every moment of her life. It will ruin her, and make her wretched. If you dare to tell her, there is no depth of degradation I will not sink to, no pit of shame I will not enter. You shall not tell her—I forbid you.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. Why?

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(After a pause.)
If I said to you that I cared for her, perhaps loved her even—you would sneer at me, wouldn’t you?

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
. I should feel it was not true. A mother’s love means devotion, unselfishness, sacrifice. What could you know of such things?

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. You are right. What could I know of such things? Don’t let us talk any more about it—as for telling my daughter who I am, that I do not allow. It is my secret, it is not yours. If I make up my mind to tell her, and I think I will, I shall tell her before I leave the house—if not, I shall never tell her.

L
ORD
W
INDERMERE
.
(Angrily.)
Then let me beg of you to leave our house at once. I will make your excuses to Margaret.
(Enter Lady Windermere R. She goes over to Mrs. Erlynne with the photograph in her hand. Lord Windermere moves to back of sofa, and anxiously watches Mrs. Erlynne as the scene progresses.)

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. I am so sorry, Mrs. Erlynne, to have kept you waiting. I couldn’t find the photograph anywhere. At last I discovered it in my husband’s dressing-room—he had stolen it.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Takes the photograph from her and looks at it.)
I am not surprised—it is charming.
(Goes over to sofa with Lady Windermere, and sits down beside her. Looks again at the photograph.)
And so that is your little boy! What is he called?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Gerard, after my dear father.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
.
(Laying the photograph down.)
Really?

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Yes. If it had been a girl, I would have called it after my mother. My mother had the same name as myself, Margaret.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. My name is Margaret too.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. Indeed!

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Yes.
(Pause.)
You are devoted to your mother’s memory, Lady Windermere, your husband tells me.

L
ADY
W
INDERMERE
. We all have ideals in life. At least we all should have. Mine is my mother.

M
RS
. E
RLYNNE
. Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they’re better.