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 miserable, at a moment’s notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent 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 know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one’s husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman’s duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.
Lady Hunstanton. How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.
Lady Stutfield. Thank you, thank you. It has been quite, quite entrancing. I must try and remember it all. There are such a number of details that are so very, very important.
Lady Caroline. But you have not told us yet what the reward of the Ideal Man is to be.
Mrs. Allonby. His reward? Oh, infinite expectation. That is quite enough for him.
Lady Stutfield. But men are so terribly, terribly exacting, are they not?
Mrs. Allonby. That makes no matter. One should never surrender.
Lady Stutfield. Not even to the Ideal Man?
Mrs. Allonby. Certainly not to him. Unless, of course, one wants to grow tired of him.
Lady Stutfield. Oh! . . . yes. I see that. It is very, very helpful. Do you think, Mrs. Allonby, I shall ever meet the Ideal Man? Or are there more than one?
Mrs. Allonby. There are just four in London, Lady Stutfield.
Lady Hunstanton. Oh, my dear!
Mrs. Allonby. [Going over to her.] What has happened? Do tell me.
Lady Hunstanton [in a low voice] I had completely forgotten that the American young lady has been in the room all the time. I am afraid some of this clever talk may have shocked her a little.
Mrs. Allonby. Ah, that will do her so much good!
Lady Hunstanton. Let us hope she didn’t understand much. I think I had better go over and talk to her. [Rises and goes across to Hester Worsley.] Well, dear Miss Worsley. [Sitting down beside her.] How quiet you have been in your nice little corner all this time! I suppose you have been reading a book? There are so many books here in the library.
Hester. No, I have been listening to the conversation.
Lady Hunstanton. You mustn’t believe everything that was said, you know, dear.
Hester. I didn’t believe any of it.
Lady Hunstanton. That is quite right, dear.
Hester. [Continuing.] I couldn’t believe that any women could really hold such views of life as I have heard to-night from some of your guests. [An awkward pause.]
Lady Hunstanton. I hear you have such pleasant society in America. Quite like our own in places, my son wrote to me.
Hester. There are cliques in America as elsewhere, Lady Hunstanton. But true American society consists simply of all the good women and good men we have in our country.
Lady Hunstanton. What a sensible system, and I dare say quite pleasant too. I am afraid in England we have too many artificial social barriers. We don’t see as much as we should of the middle and lower classes.
Hester. In America we have no lower classes.
Lady Hunstanton. Really? What a very strange arrangement!
Mrs. Allonby. What is that dreadful girl talking about?
Lady Stutfield. She is painfully natural, is she not?
Lady Caroline. There are a great many things you haven’t got in America, I am told, Miss Worsley. They say you have no ruins, and no curiosities.
Mrs. Allonby. [To Lady Stutfield.] What nonsense! They have their mothers and their manners.
Hester. The English aristocracy supply us with our curiosities, Lady Caroline. They are sent over to us every summer, regularly, in the steamers, and propose to us the day after they land. As for ruins, we are trying to build up something that will last longer than brick or stone. [Gets up to take her fan from table.]
Lady Hunstanton. What is that, dear? Ah, yes, an iron Exhibition, is it not, at that place that has the curious name?
Hester. [Standing by table.] We are trying to build up life, Lady Hunstanton, on a better, truer, purer basis than life rests on here. This sounds strange to you all, no doubt. How could it sound other than strange? You rich people in England, you don’t know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don’t know how to live—you don’t even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life’s secret. Oh, your English society seems to me shallow, selfish, foolish. It has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears. It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong.
Lady Stutfield. I don’t think one should know of these things. It is not very, very nice, is it?
Lady Hunstanton. My dear Miss Worsley, I thought you liked English society so much. You were such a success in it. And you were so much admired by the best people. I quite forget what Lord Henry Weston said of you—but it was most complimentary, and you know what an authority he is on beauty.
Hester. Lord Henry Weston! I remember him, Lady Hunstanton. A man with a hideous smile and a hideous past. He is asked everywhere. No dinner-party is complete without him. What of those whose ruin is due to him? They are outcasts. They are nameless. If you met them in the street you would turn your head away. I don’t complain of their punishment. Let all women who have sinned be punished.
[Mrs. Arbuthnot enters from terrace behind in a cloak with a lace veil over her head. She hears the last words and starts.]
Lady Hunstanton. My dear young lady!
Hester. It is right that they should be punished, but don’t let them be the only ones to suffer. If a man and woman have sinned, let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you wish, on each, but don’t punish the one and let the other go free. Don’t have one law for men and another for women. You are unjust to women in England. And till you count what is a shame in a woman to be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded.
Lady Caroline. Might I, dear Miss Worsley, as you are standing up, ask you for my cotton that is just behind you? Thank you.
Lady Hunstanton. My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot! I am so pleased you have come up. But I didn’t hear you announced.
Mrs. Allonby. Oh, I came straight in from the terrace, Lady Hunstanton, just as I was. You didn’t tell me you had a party.
Lady Hunstanton. Not a party. Only a few guests who are staying in the house, and whom you must know. Allow me. [Tries to help her. Rings bell.] Caroline, this is Mrs. Arbuthnot, one of my sweetest friends. Lady Caroline Pontefract, Lady Stutfield, Mrs. Allonby, and my young American friend, Miss Worsley, who has just been telling us all how wicked we are.
Hester. I am afraid you think I spoke too strongly, Lady Hunstanton. But there are some things in England—
Lady Hunstanton. My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important, Lord Illingworth would tell us. The only point where I thought you were a little hard was about Lady Caroline’s brother, about poor Lord Henry. He
