An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (different e readers TXT) 📖

I should do. My life

seems to have crumbled about me. I am a ship without a rudder in a

night without a star.

 

LORD GORING. Robert, you love your wife, don’t you?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. I love her more than anything in the world. I

used to think ambition the great thing. It is not. Love is the

great thing in the world. There is nothing but love, and I love her.

But I am defamed in her eyes. I am ignoble in her eyes. There is a

wide gulf between us now. She has found me out, Arthur, she has

found me out.

 

LORD GORING. Has she never in her life done some folly - some

indiscretion - that she should not forgive your sin?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. My wife! Never! She does not know what

weakness or temptation is. I am of clay like other men. She stands

apart as good women do - pitiless in her perfection - cold and stern

and without mercy. But I love her, Arthur. We are childless, and I

have no one else to love, no one else to love me. Perhaps if God had

sent us children she might have been kinder to me. But God has given

us a lonely house. And she has cut my heart in two. Don’t let us

talk of it. I was brutal to her this evening. But I suppose when

sinners talk to saints they are brutal always. I said to her things

that were hideously true, on my side, from my standpoint, from the

standpoint of men. But don’t let us talk of that

 

LORD GORING. Your wife will forgive you. Perhaps at this moment she

is forgiving you. She loves you, Robert. Why should she not

forgive?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. God grant it! God grant it! [Buries his face

in his hands.] But there is something more I have to tell you,

Arthur.

 

[Enter PHIPPS with drinks.]

 

PHIPPS. [Hands hock and seltzer to SIR ROBERT CHILTERN.] Hock and

seltzer, sir.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Thank you.

 

LORD GORING. Is your carriage here, Robert?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. No; I walked from the club.

 

LORD GORING. Sir Robert will take my cab, Phipps.

 

PHIPPS. Yes, my lord. [Exit.]

 

LORD GORING. Robert, you don’t mind my sending you away?

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Arthur, you must let me stay for five minutes.

I have made up my mind what I am going to do to-night in the House.

The debate on the Argentine Canal is to begin at eleven. [A chair

falls in the drawing-room.] What is that?

 

LORD GORING. Nothing.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. I heard a chair fall in the next room. Some

one has been listening.

 

LORD GORING. No, no; there is no one there.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. There is some one. There are lights in the

room, and the door is ajar. Some one has been listening to every

secret of my life. Arthur, what does this mean?

 

LORD GORING. Robert, you are excited, unnerved. I tell you there is

no one in that room. Sit down, Robert.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Do you give me your word that there is no one

there?

 

LORD GORING. Yes.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Your word of honour? [Sits down.]

 

LORD GORING. Yes.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Rises.] Arthur, let me see for myself.

 

LORD GORING. No, no.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. If there is no one there why should I not look

in that room? Arthur, you must let me go into that room and satisfy

myself. Let me know that no eavesdropper has heard my life’s secret.

Arthur, you don’t realise what I am going through.

 

LORD GORING. Robert, this must stop. I have told you that there is

no one in that room - that is enough.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Rushes to the door of the room.] It is not

enough. I insist on going into this room. You have told me there is

no one there, so what reason can you have for refusing me?

 

LORD GORING. For God’s sake, don’t! There is some one there. Some

one whom you must not see.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Ah, I thought so!

 

LORD GORING. I forbid you to enter that room.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Stand back. My life is at stake. And I don’t

care who is there. I will know who it is to whom I have told my

secret and my shame. [Enters room.]

 

LORD GORING. Great heavens! his own wife!

 

[SIR ROBERT CHILTERN comes back, with a look of scorn and anger on

his face.]

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. What explanation have you to give me for the

presence of that woman here?

 

LORD GORING. Robert, I swear to you on my honour that that lady is

stainless and guiltless of all offence towards you.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. She is a vile, an infamous thing!

 

LORD GORING. Don’t say that, Robert! It was for your sake she came

here. It was to try and save you she came here. She loves you and

no one else.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. You are mad. What have I to do with her

intrigues with you? Let her remain your mistress! You are well

suited to each other. She, corrupt and shameful - you, false as a

friend, treacherous as an enemy even -

 

LORD GORING. It is not true, Robert. Before heaven, it is not true.

In her presence and in yours I will explain all.

 

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Let me pass, sir. You have lied enough upon

your word of honour.

 

[SIR ROBERT CHILTERN goes out. LORD GORING rushes to the door of the

drawing-room, when MRS. CHEVELEY comes out, looking radiant and much

amused.]

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. [With a mock curtsey] Good evening, Lord Goring!

 

LORD GORING. Mrs. Cheveley! Great heavens! … May I ask what you

were doing in my drawing-room?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Merely listening. I have a perfect passion for

listening through keyholes. One always hears such wonderful things

through them.

 

LORD GORING. Doesn’t that sound rather like tempting Providence?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Oh! surely Providence can resist temptation by this

time. [Makes a sign to him to take her cloak off, which he does.]

 

LORD GORING. I am glad you have called. I am going to give you some

good advice.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Oh! pray don’t. One should never give a woman

anything that she can’t wear in the evening.

 

LORD GORING. I see you are quite as wilful as you used to be.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Far more! I have greatly improved. I have had more

experience.

 

LORD GORING. Too much experience is a dangerous thing. Pray have a

cigarette. Half the pretty women in London smoke cigarettes.

Personally I prefer the other half.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Thanks. I never smoke. My dressmaker wouldn’t like

it, and a woman’s first duty in life is to her dressmaker, isn’t it?

What the second duty is, no one has as yet discovered.

 

LORD GORING. You have come here to sell me Robert Chiltern’s letter,

haven’t you?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. To offer it to you on conditions. How did you guess

that?

 

LORD GORING. Because you haven’t mentioned the subject. Have you

got it with you?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. [Sitting down.] Oh, no! A well-made dress has no

pockets.

 

LORD GORING. What is your price for it?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. How absurdly English you are! The English think that

a cheque-book can solve every problem in life. Why, my dear Arthur,

I have very much more money than you have, and quite as much as

Robert Chiltern has got hold of. Money is not what I want.

 

LORD GORING. What do you want then, Mrs. Cheveley?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Why don’t you call me Laura?

 

LORD GORING. I don’t like the name.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. You used to adore it.

 

LORD GORING. Yes: that’s why. [MRS. CHEVELEY motions to him to sit

down beside her. He smiles, and does so.]

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Arthur, you loved me once.

 

LORD GORING. Yes.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. And you asked me to be your wife.

 

LORD GORING. That was the natural result of my loving you.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. And you threw me over because you saw, or said you

saw, poor old Lord Mortlake trying to have a violent flirtation with

me in the conservatory at Tenby.

 

LORD GORING. I am under the impression that my lawyer settled that

matter with you on certain terms … dictated by yourself.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. At that time I was poor; you were rich.

 

LORD GORING. Quite so. That is why you pretended to love me.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. [Shrugging her shoulders.] Poor old Lord Mortlake,

who had only two topics of conversation, his gout and his wife! I

never could quite make out which of the two he was talking about. He

used the most horrible language about them both. Well, you were

silly, Arthur. Why, Lord Mortlake was never anything more to me

than an amusement. One of those utterly tedious amusements one only

finds at an English country house on an English country Sunday. I

don’t think any one at all morally responsible for what he or she

does at an English country house.

 

LORD GORING. Yes. I know lots of people think that.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. I loved you, Arthur.

 

LORD GORING. My dear Mrs. Cheveley, you have always been far too

clever to know anything about love.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. I did love you. And you loved me. You know you

loved me; and love is a very wonderful thing. I suppose that when a

man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except

continue to love her? [Puts her hand on his.]

 

LORD GORING. [Taking his hand away quietly.] Yes: except that.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. [After a pause.] I am tired of living abroad. I

want to come back to London. I want to have a charming house here.

I want to have a salon. If one could only teach the English how to

talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite

civilised. Besides, I have arrived at the romantic stage. When I

saw you last night at the Chilterns’, I knew you were the only person

I had ever cared for, if I ever have cared for anybody, Arthur. And

so, on the morning of the day you marry me, I will give you Robert

Chiltern’s letter. That is my offer. I will give it to you now, if

you promise to marry me.

 

LORD GORING. Now?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. [Smiling.] To-morrow.

 

LORD GORING. Are you really serious?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Yes, quite serious.

 

LORD GORING. I should make you a very bad husband.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. I don’t mind bad husbands. I have had two. They

amused me immensely.

 

LORD GORING. You mean that you amused yourself immensely, don’t you?

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. What do you know about my married life?

 

LORD GORING. Nothing: but I can read it like a book.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. What book?

 

LORD GORING. [Rising.] The Book of Numbers.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. Do you think it is quite charming of you to be so

rude to a woman in your own house?

 

LORD GORING. In the case of very fascinating women, sex is a

challenge, not a defence.

 

MRS. CHEVELEY. I suppose that is meant for a compliment. My dear

Arthur, women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

That is the difference between the two sexes.

 

LORD GORING. Women are never disarmed by anything, as far