ST. OLPHERTS. Oh, yes. Ha! Ha!
AGNES. I've come to think it a reasonable one. At the moment I
considered it a gross impertinence.
ST. OLPHERTS. Written requests are so dependent on a sympathetic
reader.
AGNES. That meeting might have saved you time and trouble.
ST. OLPHERTS. I grudge neither.
AGNES. It might perhaps have shown your Grace that your view of life is
too narrow; that your method of dealing with its problems wants
variety; that, in point of fact, your employment upon your present
mission is distinctly inappropriate. Our meeting today may serve the
same purpose.
ST. OLPHERTS. My view of life?
AGNES. That all men and women may safely be judged by the standards of
the casino and the dancing-garden.
ST. OLPHERTS. I have found those standards not altogether
untrustworthy. My method--?
AGNES. To scoff, to sneer, to ridicule.
ST. OLPHERTS. Ah! And how much is there, my dear Mrs. Ebbsmith,
belonging to humanity that survives being laughed at?
AGNES. More than you credit, Duke. For example, I--I think it possible
you may not succeed in grinning away the compact between Mr. Cleeve and
myself?
ST. OLPHERTS. Compact?
AGNES. Between serious man and woman.
ST. OLPHERTS. Serious woman.
AGNES. Ah! At least you must see that--serious woman. [Rising, facing
him.] You can't fail to realise, even from this slight personal
knowledge of me, that you are not dealing just now with some poor,
feeble ballet-girl.
ST. OLPHERTS. But how well you put it! [Rising.] And how frank of you
to furnish, as it were, a plan of the fortifications to the--the--
AGNES. Why do you stick at "enemy"?
ST. OLPHERTS. It's not the word. Opponent! For the moment, perhaps,
opponent. I am never an enemy, I hope, where your sex is concerned.
AGNES. No, I am aware that you are not over-nice in the bestowal of
your patronage--where my sex is concerned.
ST. OLPHERTS. You regard my appearance in an affair of morals as a
quaint one?
AGNES. Your Grace is beginning to know me.
ST. OLPHERTS. Dear lady, you take pride, I hear, in belonging to--The
People. You would delight me amazingly by giving me an inkling of the
popular notion of my career.
AGNES. [Walking away.] Excuse me.
ST. OLPHERTS. [Following her.] Please! It would be instructive, perhaps
chastening. I entreat.
AGNES. No.
ST OLPHERTS. You are letting sentiment intrude itself. [Sitting, in
pain.] I challenge you.
AGNES. At Eton you were curiously precocious. The head-master,
referring to your aptitude with books, prophesied a brilliant future
for you; your tutor, alarmed by your attachment to a certain cottage at
Ascot which was minus a host, thanked his stars to be rid of you. At
Oxford you closed all books, except, of course, betting-books.
ST. OLPHERTS. I detected the tendency of the age--scholarship for the
masses. I considered it my turn to be merely intuitively intelligent.
AGNES. You left Oxford a gambler and a spendthrift. A year or two in
town established you as an amiable, undisguised debauchee. The rest is
modern history.
ST. OLPHERTS. Complete your sketch. Don't stop at the--rude outline.
AGNES. Your affairs falling into disorder, you promptly married a
wealthy woman--the poor, rich lady who has for some years honoured you
by being your duchess at a distance. This burlesque of a marriage
helped to reassure your friends, and actually obtained for you an
ornamental appointment for which an over-taxed nation provides a
handsome stipend. But, to sum up, you must always remain an irritating
source of uneasiness to your own order, as, luckily, you will always be
a sharp-edged weapon in the hands of mine.
ST. OLPHERTS. [With a polite smile.] Yours! Ah, to that small, unruly
section to which I understand you particularly attach yourself. To
the--
AGNES. [With changed manner, flashing eyes, harsh voice, and violent
gestures.] The sufferers, the toilers; that great crowd of old and
young--old and young stamped by excessive labour and privation all of
one pattern--whose backs bend under burdens, whose bones ache and grow
awry, whose skins, in youth and in age, are wrinkled and yellow; those
from whom a fair share of the earth's space and of the light of day is
withheld. [Looking down at him fiercely.] The half-starved who are
bidden to stand with their feet in the kennel to watch gay processions
in which you and your kind are borne high. Those who would strip the
robes from a dummy aristocracy and cast the broken dolls into the limbo
of a nation's discarded toys. Those who--mark me!--are already upon
the highway, marching, marching; whose time is coming as surely as
yours is going!
ST. OLPHERTS. [Clapping his hands gently.] Bravo! Bravo! Really a flash
of the old fire. Admirable! [She walks away to the window with an
impatient exclamation.] Your present affaire du coeur does not wholly
absorb you, then, Mrs. Ebbsmith. Even now the murmurings of love have
not entirely superseded the thunderous denunciations of--h'm--You
once bore a nickname, my dear.
AGNES. [Turning sharply.] Ho! So you've heard that, have you?
ST. OLPHERTS. Oh, yes.
AGNES. Mad--Agnes? [He bows deprecatingly.] We appear to have studied
each other's history pretty closely.
ST. OLPHERTS. Dear lady, this is not the first time the same roof has
covered us.
AGNES. No?
ST. OLPHERTS. Five years ago, on a broiling night in July, I joined a
party of men who made an excursion from a club-house in St James's
Street to the unsavoury district of St. Luke's.
AGNES. Oh, yes.
ST. OLPHERTS. A depressin' building; the Iron Hall, Barker
Street--no--Carter Street.
AGNES. Precisely.
ST. OLPHERTS. We took our places amongst a handful of frowsy folks who
cracked nuts and blasphemed. On the platform stood a gaunt, white-faced
young lady resolutely engaged in making up by extravagance of gesture
for the deficiencies of an exhausted voice. "There," said one of my
companions, "that is the notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith." Upon which a person
near us, whom I judged from his air of leaden laziness to be a British
working man, blurted out, "Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith! Mad Agnes! That's
the name her sanguinary friends give her--Mad Agnes!" At that moment
the eye of the panting oratress caught mine for an instant, and you and
I first met.
AGNES. [Passing her hand across her brow, thoughtfully.]
Mad--Agnes . . . [To him, with a grim smile.] We have both been
criticised, in our time, pretty sharply, eh, Duke?
ST. OLPHERTS. Yes. Let that reflection make you more charitable to a
poor peer. [A knock at the door.]
AGNES. Entrez!
[FORTUNE and ANTONIO enter, ANTONIO carrying tea, &c., upon a tray.]
AGNES. [To ST. OLPHERTS.] You drink tea--fellow sufferer? [He
signifies assent. FORTUNE places the tray on the table, then withdraws
with ANTONIO. AGNES pours out tea.]
ST. OLPHERTS. [Producing a little box from his waistcoat pocket.] No
milk, dear lady. And may I be allowed--saccharine? [She hands him his
cup of tea; their eyes meet.]
AGNES. [Scornfully.] Tell me now--really--why do the Cleeves send a
rip like you to do their serious work?
ST. OLPHERTS. [Laughing heartily.] Ha, ha, ha! Rip! ha, ha! Poor solemn
family! Oh, set a thief to catch a thief, you know. That, I presume, is
their motive.
AGNES. [Pausing in the act of pouring out, and staring at him.] What do
you mean?
ST OLPHERTS. [Sipping his tea.] Set a thief to catch a thief. And by
deduction, set one sensualist--who, after all, doesn't take the
trouble to deceive himself--to rescue another who does.
AGNES. If I understand you, that is an insinuation against Mr. Cleeve.