GREGORY. Sibthorpe!
MRS. JUNO. Sibthorpe is my husband's Christian name. I oughtn't to call
him Tops to you now.
GREGORY [chuckling]. It sounded like something to drink. But I have no
right to laugh at him. My Christian name is Gregory, which sounds like
a powder.
MRS. JUNO [chilled]. That is so like a man! I offer you my heart's
warmest friendliest feeling; and you think of nothing but a silly joke.
A quip like that makes you forget me.
GREGORY. Forget you! Oh, if I only could!
MRS. JUNO. If you could, would you?
GREGORY [burying his shamed face in his hands]. No: I'd die first. Oh,
I hate myself.
MRS. JUNO. I glory in myself. It's so jolly to be reckless. CAN a man
be reckless, I wonder.
GREGORY [straightening himself desperately]. No. I'm not reckless. I
know what I'm doing: my conscience is awake. Oh, where is the
intoxication of love? the delirium? the madness that makes a man think
the world well lost for the woman he adores? I don't think anything of
the sort: I see that it's not worth it: I know that it's wrong: I have
never in my life been cooler, more businesslike.
MRS. JUNO. [opening her arms to him] But you can't resist me.
GREGORY. I must. I ought [throwing himself into her arms]. Oh, my
darling, my treasure, we shall be sorry for this.
MRS. JUNO. We can forgive ourselves. Could we forgive ourselves if we
let this moment slip?
GREGORY. I protest to the last. I'm against this. I have been pushed
over a precipice. I'm innocent. This wild joy, this exquisite
tenderness, this ascent into heaven can thrill me to the uttermost
fibre of my heart [with a gesture of ecstasy she hides her face on his
shoulder]; but it can't subdue my mind or corrupt my conscience, which
still shouts to the skies that I'm not a willing party to this
outrageous conduct. I repudiate the bliss with which you are filling me.
MRS. JUNO. Never mind your conscience. Tell me how happy you are.
GREGORY. No, I recall you to your duty. But oh, I will give you my life
with both hands if you can tell me that you feel for me one millionth
part of what I feel for you now.
MRS. JUNO. Oh, yes, yes. Be satisfied with that. Ask for no more. Let
me go.
GREGORY. I can't. I have no will. Something stronger than either of us
is in command here. Nothing on earth or in heaven can part us now. You
know that, don't you?
MRS. JUNO. Oh, don't make me say it. Of course I know. Nothing--not
life nor death nor shame nor anything can part us.
A MATTER-OF-FACT MALE VOICE IN THE CORRIDOR. All right. This must be it.
The two recover with a violent start; release one another; and spring
back to opposite sides of the lounge.
GREGORY. That did it.
MRS. JUNO [in a thrilling whisper] Sh--sh--sh! That was my husband's
voice.
GREGORY. Impossible: it's only our guilty fancy.
A WOMAN'S VOICE. This is the way to the lounge. I know it.
GREGORY. Great Heaven! we're both mad. That's my wife's voice.
MRS. JUNO. Ridiculous! Oh! we're dreaming it all. We [the door opens;
and Sibthorpe Juno appears in the roseate glow of the corridor (which
happens to be papered in pink) with Mrs. Lunn, like Tannhauser in the
hill of Venus. He is a fussily energetic little man, who gives himself
an air of gallantry by greasing the points of his moustaches and
dressing very carefully. She is a tall, imposing, handsome, languid
woman, with flashing dark eyes and long lashes. They make for the
chesterfield, not noticing the two palpitating figures blotted against
the walls in the gloom on either side. The figures flit away
noiselessly through the window and disappear].
JUNO [officiously] Ah: here we are. [He leads the way to the sofa]. Sit
down: I'm sure you're tired. [She sits]. That's right. [He sits beside
her on her left]. Hullo! [he rises] this sofa's quite warm.
MRS. LUNN [bored] Is it? I don't notice it. I expect the sun's been on
it.
JUNO. I felt it quite distinctly: I'm more thinly clad than you. [He
sits down again, and proceeds, with a sigh of satisfaction]. What a
relief to get off the ship and have a private room! That's the worst of
a ship. You're under observation all the time.
MRS. LUNN. But why not?
JUNO. Well, of course there's no reason: at least I suppose not. But,
you know, part of the romance of a journey is that a man keeps
imagining that something might happen; and he can't do that if there
are a lot of people about and it simply can't happen.
MRS. LUNN. Mr. Juno: romance is all very well on board ship; but when
your foot touches the soil of England there's an end of it.
JUNO. No: believe me, that's a foreigner's mistake: we are the most
romantic people in the world, we English. Why, my very presence here is
a romance.
MRS. LUNN [faintly ironical] Indeed?
JUNO. Yes. You've guessed, of course, that I'm a married man.
MRS. LUNN. Oh, that's all right. I'm a married woman.
JUNO. Thank Heaven for that! To my English mind, passion is not real
passion without guilt. I am a red-blooded man, Mrs. Lunn: I can't help
it. The tragedy of my life is that I married, when quite young, a woman
whom I couldn't help being very fond of. I longed for a guilty
passion--for the real thing--the wicked thing; and yet I couldn't care
twopence for any other woman when my wife was about. Year after year
went by: I felt my youth slipping away without ever having had a
romance in my life; for marriage is all very well; but it isn't
romance. There's nothing wrong in it, you see.
MRS. LUNN. Poor man! How you must have suffered!
JUNO. No: that was what was so tame about it. I wanted to suffer. You
get so sick of being happily married. It's always the happy marriages
that break up. At last my wife and I agreed that we ought to take a
holiday.
MRS. LUNN. Hadn't you holidays every year?
JUNO. Oh, the seaside and so on! That's not what we meant. We meant a
holiday from one another.
MRS. LUNN. How very odd!
JUNO. She said it was an excellent idea; that domestic felicity was
making us perfectly idiotic; that she wanted a holiday, too. So we
agreed to go round the world in opposite directions. I started for Suez
on the day she sailed for New York.
MRS. LUNN [suddenly becoming attentive] That's precisely what Gregory
and I did. Now I wonder did he want a holiday from me! What he said was
that he wanted the delight of meeting me after a long absence.
JUNO. Could anything be more romantic than that? Would anyone else than
an Englishman have thought of it? I daresay my temperament seems tame
to your boiling southern blood--
MRS. LUNN. My what!
JUNO. Your southern blood. Don't you remember how you told me, that
night in the saloon when I sang "Farewell and adieu to you dear Spanish
ladies," that you were by birth a lady of Spain? Your splendid
Andalusian beauty speaks for itself.
MRS. LUNN. Stuff! I was born in Gibraltar. My father was Captain
Jenkins. In the artillery.
JUNO [ardently] It is climate and not race that determines the
temperament. The fiery sun of Spain blazed on your cradle; and it
rocked to the roar of British cannon.
MRS. LUNN. What eloquence! It reminds me of my husband when he was in
love before we were married. Are you in love?
JUNO. Yes; and with the same woman.
MRS. LUNN. Well, of course, I didn't suppose you were in love with two
women.
JUNO. I don't think you quite understand. I meant that I am in love
with you.
MRS. LUNN [relapsing into deepest boredom] Oh, that! Men do fall in
love with me. They all seem to think me a creature with volcanic
passions: I'm sure I don't know why; for all the volcanic women I know
are plain little creatures with sandy hair. I don't consider human
volcanoes respectable. And I'm so tired of the subject! Our house is
always full of women who are in love with my husband and men who are in
love with me. We encourage it because it's pleasant to have company.
JUNO. And is your husband as insensible as yourself?
MRS. LUNN. Oh, Gregory's not insensible: very far from it; but I am the
only woman in the world for him.
JUNO. But you? Are you really as insensible as you say you are?
MRS. LUNN. I never said anything of the kind. I'm not at all insensible
by nature; but (I don't know whether you've noticed it) I am what
people call rather a fine figure of a woman.
JUNO [passionately] Noticed it! Oh, Mrs. Lunn! Have I been able to
notice anything else since we met?
MRS. LUNN. There you go, like all the rest of them! I ask you, how do
you expect a woman to keep up what you call her sensibility when this
sort of thing has happened to her about three times a week ever since
she was seventeen? It used to upset me and terrify me at first. Then I
got rather a taste for it. It came to a climax with Gregory: that was
why I married him. Then it became a mild lark, hardly worth the
trouble. After that I found it valuable once or twice as a spinal tonic
when I was run down; but now it's an unmitigated bore. I don't mind
your declaration: I daresay it gives you a certain pleasure to make it.
I quite understand that you adore me; but (if you don't mind) I'd
rather you didn't keep on saying so.
JUNO. Is there then no hope for me?
MRS. LUNN. Oh, yes. Gregory has an idea that married women keep lists
of the men they'll marry if they become widows. I'll put your name
down, if that will satisfy you.
JUNO. Is the list a long one?
MRS. LUNN. Do you mean the real list? Not the one I show to Gregory:
there are hundreds of names on that; but the little private list that
he'd better not see?
JUNO. Oh, will you really put me on that? Say you will.
MRS. LUNN. Well, perhaps I will. [He kisses her hand]. Now don't begin
abusing the privilege.
JUNO. May I call you by your Christian name?
MRS. LUNN. No: it's too long. You can't go about calling a woman
Seraphita.
JUNO [ecstatically] Seraphita!
MRS. LUNN. I used to be called Sally at home; but when I married a man
named Lunn, of course that became ridiculous. That's my one little pet
joke. Call me Mrs. Lunn for short. And change the subject, or I shall
go to sleep.
JUNO. I can't change the subject. For me there is no other subject. Why
else have you put me on your list?
MRS. LUNN. Because you're a solicitor. Gregory's a solicitor. I'm
accustomed to my husband being a solicitor and telling me things he
oughtn't to tell anybody.
JUNO [ruefully] Is that all? Oh, I can't believe that the voice of love
has ever thoroughly awakened you.
MRS. LUNN. No: it sends me to sleep. [Juno appeals against this by an
amorous demonstration]. It's no use, Mr. Juno: I'm hopelessly
respectable: the Jenkinses always were. Don't you realize that unless
most women were like that, the world couldn't go on as it does?
JUNO [darkly] You think it goes on respectably; but I can tell you as a
solicitor--
MRS. LUNN. Stuff! of course all the disreputable people who get into
trouble go to you, just as all the sick people go to the doctors; but
most people never go to a solicitor.
JUNO [rising, with a growing sense of injury] Look here, Mrs. Lunn: do
you think a man's heart is a potato? or a turnip? or a ball of knitting
wool? that you can throw it away like this?
MRS. LUNN. I don't throw away balls of knitting wool. A man's heart
seems to me much like a sponge: it sops up dirty water as well as clean.
JUNO. I have never been treated like this in my life. Here am I, a
married man, with a most attractive wife: a wife I adore, and who
adores me, and has never as much as looked at any other man since we
were married. I come and throw all this at your feet. I! I, a
solicitor! braving the risk of your husband putting me into the divorce
court and making me a beggar and an outcast! I do this for your sake.
And you go on as if I were making no sacrifice: as if I had told you
it's a fine evening, or asked you to have a cup of tea. It's not human.
It's not right. Love has its rights as well as respectability [he sits
down again, aloof and sulky].
MRS. LUNN. Nonsense! Here, here's a flower [she gives him one]. Go and
dream over it until you feel hungry. Nothing brings people to their
senses like hunger.
JUNO [contemplating the flower without rapture] What good's this?
MRS. LUNN [snatching it from him] Oh! you don't love me a bit.
JUNO. Yes I do. Or at least I did. But I'm an Englishman; and I think
you ought to respect the conventions of English life.
MRS. LUNN. But I am respecting them; and you're not.
JUNO. Pardon me. I may be doing wrong; but I'm doing it in a proper and
customary manner. You may be doing right; but you're doing it in an
unusual and questionable manner. I am not prepared to put up with that.
I can stand being badly treated: I'm no baby, and can take care of
myself with anybody. And of course I can stand being well treated. But
the thing I can't stand is being unexpectedly treated, It's outside my
scheme of life. So come now! you've got to behave naturally and
straightforwardly with me. You can leave husband and child, home,
friends, and country, for my sake, and come with me to some southern
isle--or say South America--where we can be all in all to one another.
Or you can tell your husband and let him jolly well punch my head if he
can. But I'm damned if I'm going to stand any eccentricity. It's not
respectable.
GREGORY [coming in from the terrace and advancing with dignity to his
wife's end of the chesterfield]. Will you have the goodness, sir, in
addressing this lady, to keep your temper and refrain from using
profane language?
MRS. LUNN [rising, delighted] Gregory! Darling [she enfolds him in a
copious embrace]!
JUNO [rising] You make love to another man to my face!
MRS. LUNN. Why, he's my husband.
JUNO. That takes away the last rag of excuse for such conduct. A nice
world it would be if married people were to carry on their endearments
before everybody!
GREGORY. This is ridiculous. What the devil business is it of yours
what passes between my wife and myself? You're not her husband, are you?
JUNO. Not at present; but I'm on the list. I'm her prospective husband:
you're only her actual one. I'm the anticipation: you're the
disappointment.
MRS. LUNN. Oh, my Gregory is not a disappointment. [Fondly] Are you,
dear?
GREGORY. You just wait, my pet. I'll settle this chap for you. [He
disengages himself from her embrace, and faces Juno. She sits down
placidly]. You call me a disappointment, do you? Well, I suppose every
husband's a disappointment. What about yourself? Don't try to look like
an unmarried man. I happen to know the lady you disappointed. I
travelled in the same ship with her; and--
JUNO. And you fell in love with her.
GREGORY [taken aback] Who told you that?
JUNO. Aha! you confess it. Well, if you want to know, nobody told me.
Everybody falls in love with my wife.
GREGORY. And do you fall in love with everybody's wife?
JUNO. Certainly not. Only with yours.
MRS. LUNN. But what's the good of saying that, Mr. Juno? I'm married to
him; and there's an end of it.
JUNO. Not at all. You can get a divorce.
MRS. LUNN. What for?
JUNO. For his misconduct with my wife.
GREGORY [deeply indignant] How dare you, sir, asperse the character of
that sweet lady? a lady whom I have taken under my protection.
JUNO. Protection!
MRS. JUNO [returning hastily] Really you must be more careful what you
say about me, Mr. Lunn.
JUNO. My precious! [He embraces her]. Pardon this betrayal of my
feeling; but I've not seen my wife for several weeks; and she is very
dear to me.
GREGORY. I call this cheek. Who is making love to his own wife before
people now, pray?
MRS. LUNN. Won't you introduce me to your wife, Mr. Juno?
MRS. JUNO. How do you do? [They shake hands; and Mrs. Juno sits down
beside Mrs. Lunn, on her left].
MRS. LUNN. I'm so glad to find you do credit to Gregory's taste. I'm
naturally rather particular about the women he falls in love with.
JUNO [sternly] This is no way to take your husband's unfaithfulness.
[To Lunn] You ought to teach your wife better. Where's her feelings?
It's scandalous.
GREGORY. What about your own conduct, pray?
JUNO. I don't defend it; and there's an end of the matter.
GREGORY. Well, upon my soul! What difference does your not defending it
make?
JUNO. A fundamental difference. To serious people I may appear wicked.
I don't defend myself: I am wicked, though not bad at heart. To
thoughtless people I may even appear comic. Well, laugh at me: I have
given myself away. But Mrs. Lunn seems to have no opinion at all about
me. She doesn't seem to know whether I'm wicked or comic. She doesn't
seem to care. She has no more sense. I say it's not right. I repeat, I
have sinned; and I'm prepared to suffer.
MRS. JUNO. Have you really sinned, Tops?
MRS. LUNN [blandly] I don't remember your sinning. I have a shocking
bad memory for trifles; but I think I should remember that--if you mean
me.
JUNO [raging] Trifles! I have fallen in love with a monster.
GREGORY. Don't you dare call my wife a monster.
MRS. JUNO [rising quickly and coming between them]. Please don't lose
your temper, Mr. Lunn: I won't have my Tops bullied.
GREGORY. Well, then, let him not brag about sinning with my wife. [He
turns impulsively to his wife; makes her rise; and takes her proudly on
his arm]. What pretension has he to any such honor?
JUNO. I sinned in intention. [Mrs. Juno abandons him and resumes her
seat, chilled]. I'm as guilty as if I had actually sinned. And I insist
on being treated as a sinner, and not walked over as if I'd done
nothing, by your wife or any other man.
MRS. LUNN. Tush! [She sits down again contemptuously].
JUNO [furious] I won't be belittled.
MRS. LUNN [to Mrs. Juno] I hope you'll come and stay with us now that
you and Gregory are such friends, Mrs. Juno.