A lady and gentleman are sitting together on a chesterfield in a
retired corner of the lounge of a seaside hotel. It is a summer night:
the French window behind them stands open. The terrace without
overlooks a moonlit harbor. The lounge is dark. The chesterfield,
upholstered in silver grey, and the two figures on it in evening dress,
catch the light from an arc lamp somewhere; but the walls, covered with
a dark green paper, are in gloom. There are two stray chairs, one on
each side. On the gentleman's right, behind him up near the window, is
an unused fireplace. Opposite it on the lady's left is a door. The
gentleman is on the lady's right.
The lady is very attractive, with a musical voice and soft appealing
manners. She is young: that is, one feels sure that she is under
thirty-five and over twenty-four. The gentleman does not look much
older. He is rather handsome, and has ventured as far in the direction
of poetic dandyism in the arrangement of his hair as any man who is not
a professional artist can afford to in England. He is obviously very
much in love with the lady, and is, in fact, yielding to an
irresistible impulse to throw his arms around her.
THE LADY. Don't--oh don't be horrid. Please, Mr. Lunn [she rises from
the lounge and retreats behind it]! Promise me you won't be horrid.
GREGORY LUNN. I'm not being horrid, Mrs. Juno. I'm not going to be
horrid. I love you: that's all. I'm extraordinarily happy.
MRS. JUNO. You will really be good?
GREGORY. I'll be whatever you wish me to be. I tell you I love you. I
love loving you. I don't want to be tired and sorry, as I should be if
I were to be horrid. I don't want you to be tired and sorry. Do come
and sit down again.
MRS. JUNO [coming back to her seat]. You're sure you don't want
anything you oughtn't to?
GREGORY. Quite sure. I only want you [she recoils]. Don't be alarmed. I
like wanting you. As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living.
Satisfaction is death.
MRS. JUNO. Yes; but the impulse to commit suicide is sometimes
irresistible.
GREGORY. Not with you.
MRS. JUNO. What!
GREGORY. Oh, it sounds uncomplimentary; but it isn't really. Do you
know why half the couples who find themselves situated as we are now
behave horridly?
MRS. JUNO. Because they can't help it if they let things go too far.
GREGORY. Not a bit of it. It's because they have nothing else to do,
and no other way of entertaining each other. You don't know what it is
to be alone with a woman who has little beauty and less conversation.
What is a man to do? She can't talk interestingly; and if he talks that
way himself she doesn't understand him. He can't look at her: if he
does, he only finds out that she isn't beautiful. Before the end of
five minutes they are both hideously bored. There's only one thing that
can save the situation; and that's what you call being horrid. With a
beautiful, witty, kind woman, there's no time for such follies. It's so
delightful to look at her, to listen to her voice, to hear all she has
to say, that nothing else happens. That is why the woman who is
supposed to have a thousand lovers seldom has one; whilst the stupid,
graceless animals of women have dozens.
MRS. JUNO. I wonder! It's quite true that when one feels in danger one
talks like mad to stave it off, even when one doesn't quite want to
stave it off.
GREGORY. One never does quite want to stave it off. Danger is
delicious. But death isn't. We court the danger; but the real delight
is in escaping, after all.
MRS. JUNO. I don't think we'll talk about it any more. Danger is all
very well when you do escape; but sometimes one doesn't. I tell you
frankly I don't feel as safe as you do--if you really do.
GREGORY. But surely you can do as you please without injuring anyone,
Mrs. Juno. That is the whole secret of your extraordinary charm for me.
MRS. JUNO. I don't understand.
GREGORY. Well, I hardly know how to begin to explain. But the root of
the matter is that I am what people call a good man.
MRS. JUNO. I thought so until you began making love to me.
GREGORY. But you knew I loved you all along.
MRS. JUNO. Yes, of course; but I depended on you not to tell me so;
because I thought you were good. Your blurting it out spoilt it. And it
was wicked besides.
GREGORY. Not at all. You see, it's a great many years since I've been
able to allow myself to fall in love. I know lots of charming women;
but the worst of it is, they're all married. Women don't become
charming, to my taste, until they're fully developed; and by that time,
if they're really nice, they're snapped up and married. And then,
because I am a good man, I have to place a limit to my regard for them.
I may be fortunate enough to gain friendship and even very warm
affection from them; but my loyalty to their husbands and their hearths
and their happiness obliges me to draw a line and not overstep it. Of
course I value such affectionate regard very highly indeed. I am
surrounded with women who are most dear to me. But every one of them
has a post sticking up, if I may put it that way, with the inscription
Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. How we all loathe that notice! In every
lovely garden, in every dell full of primroses, on every fair hillside,
we meet that confounded board; and there is always a gamekeeper round
the corner. But what is that to the horror of meeting it on every
beautiful woman, and knowing that there is a husband round the corner?
I have had this accursed board standing between me and every dear and
desirable woman until I thought I had lost the power of letting myself
fall really and wholeheartedly in love.
MRS. JUNO. Wasn't there a widow?
GREGORY. No. Widows are extraordinarily scarce in modern society.
Husbands live longer than they used to; and even when they do die,
their widows have a string of names down for their next.
MRS. JUNO. Well, what about the young girls?
GREGORY. Oh, who cares for young girls? They're sympathetic. They're
beginners. They don't attract me. I'm afraid of them.
MRS. JUNO. That's the correct thing to say to a woman of my age. But it
doesn't explain why you seem to have put your scruples in your pocket
when you met me.